'iprTto'.y<T,  "as" 


THE  NEW  EPOCH 


GEORGE  S.  MORISON 


THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


THE    NEW    EPOCH 

AS    DEVELOPED    BY  THE 

MANUFACTURE    OF 

POWER 


THE  NEW  EPOCH 

AS   DEVELOPED 

BY  THE  MANUFACTURE 

OF   POWER 


BY   GEORGE   S.    MORISON 


BOSTON    AND    NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

1903 


COPYRIGHT    1903    BY    ROBERT   S.   MORISON 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


Pitblished  November  igoj 


NOTE 

The  preface  of  this  volume  gives  the  rea- 
sons for  its  preparation  in  its  present  form 
and  the  date  at  which  it  was  prepared.  Al- 
though it  was  ready  for  the  press  in  April, 

5? 

j;.      1898,  it   was   not   then    published.    There 

5      were  several  causes  for  this,  one  of  which 

was  a  natural  modesty  that  made  the  author 

z      hesitate  to  offer  to  the  public  a  work  which 
o 


was  outside  the  field  of  his  usual  profes- 
sional writings.     Mr.  Morison  died  July  i, 
"-'       1903.    The  manuscript  is  now  published  as 
he  left  it.    The  reader  should  occasionally 

CO  ■' 

5       bear  m  mind  that  it  was  completed  before 

iJL 

o       the  war  with  Spain  occurred  and  before  the 
=       nineteenth  century  had  closed. 

Sept.  23,  1903. 


432939 


PREFACE 

The  general  idea  which  runs  through  this 
little  book  was  first  suggested  to  the  writer 
while  reading  his  classmate  John  Fiske's 
work  entitled  "  The  Discovery  of  America,'^ 
in  which  the  series  of  ethnical  periods  among 
prehistoric  men  is  elaborated.  The  fact  that 
the  world  is  now  entering  on  a  new  epoch 
of  the  same  nature  is  the  fundamental  idea 
of  the  writer.  This  idea  was  subsequently- 
developed  in  an  address,  delivered  in  June, 

1895,  as  President  of  the  American  Society 
of  Civil  Engineers,  which  he  called  "  The 
New  Epoch  and  the  Civil  Engineer;"  it 
was  further  elaborated  in  an  oration  deliv- 
ered before  the  society  of  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa    at    Cambridge,    Massachusetts,    in 

1896,  to  which  he  gave  the  title  of  "The 
New  Epoch  and  the  University  ; "  the  same 


viii  PREFACE 

subject  was  in  a  measure  completed  by  an 
address  delivered  at  the  annual  commence- 
ment of  the  Rensselaer  Polytechnic  Insti- 
tute at  Troy,  New  York,  in  June,  1897, 
which  was  entitled  "The  Civil  Engineer 
and  the  University."  Meanwhile  the  idea 
had  been  used  in  an  article  entitled  "  The 
New  Epoch  and  the  Currency,"  which  was 
prepared  as  a  campaign  document  but  was 
too  late  to  be  used  for  that  purpose,  and 
was  subsequently  published  in  the  "  North 
American  Review."  Various  friends  have 
requested  that  these  several  papers  be  put 
in  more  permanent  form,  and  this  volume 
,is  the  result  of  such  requests. 

It  seemed  necessary  to  recast  the  subject, 
but  in  doing  this  little  change  has  been 
made  in  the  language,  which  may  account 
for  some  declamatory  expressions  which  are 
more  appropriate  in  an  address  than  in  a 
book.  Chapter  I.  was  practically  common 
to  all  three  addresses.  Chapter  II.  is  taken 
principally  from  the  article  in  the  "  North 


PREFACE  ix 

American  Review."  Chapters  III.,  IV.,  and 
VIII,  are  substantially  new.  Chapter  V.  is 
principally  from  the  presidential  address, 
Chapter  VI.  from  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  ora- 
tion, and  Chapter  VII.  from  the  Rensselaer 
Polytechnic  Institute  address. 

G.  S.  M. 
Chicago,  April  i6,  1898. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  General  Conditions        .        .        .  i 

II.  Business 13 

III.  Capital 31 

IV.  Government 47 

V.  Civil  Engineering   ....  61 

VI.  The  University     ....  ']^ 

VII.  Education loi 

VIII.  Conclusion 128 


THE    NEW   EPOCH 

AS   DEVELOPED   BY  THE  MANUFAC- 
TURE OF   POWER 


GENERAL   CONDITIONS 

Students  of  primitive  society  have  divided 
the  early  development  of  the  human  race 
into  ethnical  epochs,  representing  various 
conditions  of  savagery  and  barbarism,  and 
finally  culminating  in  civilization ;  they  rec- 
ognize three  periods  of  savagery,  followed 
by  three  periods  of  barbarism.  In  the  lowest 
epoch  men  were  little  superior  to  the  ani- 
mals by  which  they  were  surrounded.  With 
the  use  of  fire  the  second  period  began. 
With  the  invention  of  the  bow  and  arrow, 
the  most  primitive  form  of  projectile,  man 
entered  the  third  period.  With  pottery,  and 
all  that  it  implies,  he  passed  from  savagery 


2  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

to  barbarism.  The  next  advance  came  with 
the  domestication  of  animals,  which  gave 
man  another  power  besides  his  own  physical 
strength.  With  the  manufacture  of  iron  the 
last  of  the  barbarous  periods  was  entered. 
By  the  invention  of  the  written  alphabet  the 
primitive  race  was  promoted  from  barbarism 
to  civilization. 

The  use  of  fire  first  placed  man  in  a  con- 
dition very  different  from  that  of  other  ani- 
mals, giving  him  a  power  the  uses  of  which 
are  even  yet  not  fully  developed.  The  do- 
mestication of  animals  was  hardly  less  im- 
.portant,  and  although  where  animals  suit- 
able for  domestication  did  not  exist  tribes 
were  able  to  pass  this  period  without  them, 
their  weakness  was  apparent  when  they 
came  in  contact  with  other  races  whose  con- 
ditions were  not  so  limited.  Finally  the  in- 
vention of  a  written  language  made  the 
work  of  one  generation  available  for  its  suc- 
cessors and  produced  historical  civilization. 

The  changes  which  mark  the  advances 
from  period  to  period  are  all  material  im- 


GENERAL  CONDITIONS  3 

provements  ;  in  every  instance  they  are  char- 
acterized by  some  distinctive  physical  de- 
vice which  has  enabled  man  either  to  utilize 
his  own  strength  better  than  before,  or  to 
increase  his  power  by  adding  other  animate 
or  inanimate  force.  The  race  that  passed 
from  one  period  to  another  acquired  re- 
sources which  it  had  not  before  ;  in  the  con- 
tests which  characterized  the  life  of  the  prim- 
itive man,  the  men  of  a  lower  period  fell  be- 
fore those  who  had  risen  higher.  But  though 
the  devices  were  of  a  purely  material  char- 
acter, they  gave  opportunities  for  mental  and 
moral  improvement  which  alone  made  fur- 
ther advance  possible,  till  finally  the  writ- 
ten alphabet  resulted  in  that  preservation 
of  knowledge  which  has  made  the  intellect- 
ual efforts  of  thirty  centuries  available  for 
ourselves.  With  the  dawn  of  civilization 
the  ethnical  periods  have  been  considered 
closed  ;  subsequent  growth  has  been  the 
natural  advance  of  civilization  marked  by 
the  events  which  make  written  history. 
But  there  is  no  reason  why  the   epoch 


4  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

which  began  with  writing  should  be  the  last. 
It  only  needed  a  new  capacity,  radically  un- 
like those  which  have  gone  before,  to  make 
an  epoch  in  civilization  as  distinct  as  those  in 
primitive  society.  Such  new  capacity  has  now 
been  found  ;  another  epoch  has  begun.  Fire, 
animal  strength,  and  written  language  have 
in  turn  advanced  men  and  nations ;  some- 
thing like  a  new  capacity  was  developed  with 
the  discovery  of  explosives  and  again  in  the 
invention  of  printing ;  but  the  capacity  of 
man  has  always  been  limited  to  his  own 
individual  strength  and  that  of  the  men  and 
animals  which  he  could  control.  His  capa- 
city is  no  longer  so  limited ;  man  has  now 
learned  to  manufacture  power,  and  with 
the  manufacture  of  power  a  new  epoch 
began.  These  words  are  used  advisedly; 
creation,  whether  of  substance  or  force,  is 
not  given  to  man ;  manufacture  is  not  crea- 
tion, but  to  change  inert  matter  from  one 
form  to  another  in  such  way  as  to  generate 
power  is  to  manufacture  power,  and  this  we 
can  do. 


GENERAL   CONDITIONS  5 

Furthermore,  not  only  does  the  manu- 
facture of  power  mark  a  new  epoch  in  de- 
velopment, but  the  change  is  greater  than 
any  which  preceded  it ;  greater  in  its  influ- 
ence on  the  world  ;  greater  in  the  results 
which  are  to  come. 

The  manufacture  of  power  means  that- 
wherever  needed  we  can  now  produce  prac- 
tically unlimited  power  ;  whatever  the  mea- 
sure of  a  single  machine,  that  machine  can 
be  used  to  make  a  greater  one  ;  we  are  no 
longer  limited  by  animal  units,  confined  by 
locations  of  waterfalls,  nor  angered  by  the 
uncertain  power  of  wind.  Power  can  be  had 
where  it  is  needed  and  when  it  is  needed. 
The  power  generated  in  a  modern  steam- 
ship in  a  single  voyage  across  the  Atlantic 
is  more  than  enough  to  raise  from  the  Nile 
and  set  in  place  every  stone  of  the  great 
Egyptian  pyramid. 

The  new  epoch  differs  from  all  preceding 
epochs,  in  that  while  they  represented  suc- 
cessive periods  of  progress,  different  races 
have  existed  simultaneously  in  every  period 


6  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

of  advancement,  whereas  the  new  epoch 
must  from  its  very  nature  soon  become  uni- 
versal. The  manufacture  of  power  has  given 
/us  the  means  of  traversing  the  entire  globe 
with  a  regularity  and  speed  which  brings  all 
races  together,  and  which  must  in  time  re- 
move all  differences  in  capacity.  It  brings 
people  of  all  races  into  contact,  and,  by  ex- 
tending knowledge,  ends  the  superstitions 
and  mysteries  which  have  had  such  influ- 
ence in  the  past.  It  enables  man  while 
working  in  unhealthy  districts  to  spend  a 
portion  of  his  time  in  places  favorable  to 
physical  health  and  bodily  vigor,  and  so  may 
end  the  climatic  degeneration  of  race,  which 
has  done  so  much  in  history.  It  is  gradually 
breaking  down  national  divisions,  substitut- 
ing the  natural  boundaries  of  convenient 
government  for  boundaries  based  on  race 
and  ignorance.  It  will  finally  make  the 
human  race  a  single  great  whole,  working 
intelligently  in  ways  and  for  ends  which  we 
cannot  yet  understand. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  predict  that  when 


GENERAL  CONDITIONS  7 

the  full  effects  of  the  manufacture  of  power 
are  realized  and  the  world  has  passed 
through  the  development  which  the  next 
ten  centuries  will  see,  that  the  time  when 
man  began  to  manufacture  power  will  be 
recognized  as  the  division  between  the  an- 
cient and  the  modern,  between  ignorance 
and  intelligence,  between  the  national  strife 
which  may  then  be  classed  as  barbarism  and 
the  new  civilization,  whatever  that  may  then 
be  called. 

The  new.  epoch  has  barely  begun.  No 
exact  dates  can  be  fixed.  Epoch  making  is 
not  a  matter  of  a  single  invention  ;  it  is  the 
general  result  which  follows.  It  was  not  the 
manufacture  of  the  first  earthen  pot,  but  the 
general  introduction  of  pottery  which  car- 
ried a  prehistoric  race  from  savagery  to 
barbarism.  It  was  not  the  invention  of  a  few 
letters,  but  the  general  use  of  a  written 
language  which  took  the  barbarian  into 
civilization.  It  was  not  the  invention  of  the 
first  steam  engine,  but  the  general  control 
of  the  manufacture  of  power  which  is  now 


8  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

taking  mankind  into  the  new  civilization. 
James  Watt  developed  his  first  steam  engine 
in  1769.  The  steam  engine  began  to  come 
into  general  use  about  the  beginning  of  this 
century.  The  nineteenth  century  has  seen 
the  development  of  the  manufacture  of 
power  by  steam.  The  steam  engine  is  still 
almost  the  sole  representative  of  manufac- 
tured power,  but  there  is  no  reason  why  this 
should  continue.  Electricity  as  a  conveyer 
of  power  has  been  developed  to  an  extent 
which  may  almost  be  classed  with  manufac- 
tured power.  New  forms  of  manufactured 
power  may  come  at  any  time,  but  the  intro- 
duction of  new  forms  is  a  comparatively  un- 
important thing.  The  great  advance  came 
with  the  ability  to  manufacture  power  at  all ; 
the  method  is  a  secondary  thing. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  that  when  the 
new  epoch  is  fully  developed  all  physical 
work  may  be  dependent  on  inanimate  power. 
It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  means  the  con- 
centration of  enormous  masses  of  power 
where  power  never  could  be  had  before  ; 


GENERAL   CONDITIONS  9 

that  it  means  the  subdivision  of  power  into 
units  of  a  minuteness  hard  to  conceive  ;  that 
it  means  the  unraveling  of  mysteries  which 
have  never  been  solved ;  that  it  means 
the  construction  of  works  of  a  magnitude 
before  which  the  greatest  monuments  of 
antiquity  become  insignificant.  The  fight- 
ing ship  of  to-day  is  a  floating  machine-shop, 
though  its  crew  of  mechanics  are  confined 
as  completely  as  the  chained  rowers  of  a 
Roman  galley.  The  battles  of  the  future 
will  not  be  fought  by  men  or  by  horses  ;  the 
camels  of  the  desert  will  never  again  con- 
front the  elephants  of  the  jungle  ;  fortifica- 
tions will  be  factories  filled  with  power.  It 
is  easy  to  recognize  that  the  discoveries 
already  made  may  be  slight  in  comparison 
with  those  which  are  to  come.  All  this  is 
a  matter  of  physical  possibility ;  it  is  inter- 
esting to  speculate  upon ;  it  is  foolish  to 
prophesy  about ;  these  achievements  are  too 
close  at  hand  for  us  to  waste  time  in  guess- 
ing what  they  will  be. 

The  substitution  of  inanimate  manufac- 


lo  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

tured  power  for  the  animal  power  on  which 
our  race  was  formerly  dependent  means  a 
separation  of  the  force  which  does  the  work 
from  the  intellect  which  directs  it.  The 
power  which  we  make  and  use  is  absolutely 
without  sense  ;  all  this  must  come  from  the 
human  mind.  The  man  who  drives  a  horse 
has  little  to  do  ;  the  horse  finds  the  way  and 
does  the  work.  But  the  driver  of  a  motor 
carriage  has  a  senseless  machine,  and  all 
direction  must  come  from  him.  Manufac- 
tured power  demands  intelligence  to  supply 
the  sense  which  the  power  lacks.  The  ex- 
treme logical  development  would  be  a  con- 
dition where  every  kind  of  physical  work  is 
performed  by  machines,  while  human  effort 
is  reduced  to  design  and  care.  Such  a  re- 
sult will  never  be  reached.  So  long  as  men 
have  bodies,  the  forces  placed  in  those 
bodies  must  be  used,  but  the  substitution  of 
manufactured  power  for  human  labor  is  a 
promotion  for  man,  whose  value  becomes 
measured  by  skill  in  directing  power  and  not 
by  muscular  strength. 


GENERAL   CONDITIONS  ii 

No  changes  have  ever  equaled  those 
through  which  the  world  is  passing  now. 
The  manufacture  of  power  has  an  intel- 
lectual as  well  as  a  physical  effect ;  it  has 
separated  power  from  the  mind  which  must 
manage  it ;  it  calls  for  intelligent  design  and 
direction  of  the  multitude  of  works  which  it 
has  rendered  possible  ;  it  has  equipped  our 
generation  with  tools  for  study  and  investi- 
gation as  well  as  for  mechanical  work.  The 
new  epoch  will  alter  the  relations  between 
the  professions,  business,  and  trades  ;  it  will 
readjust  the  duties  of  government  and  the 
relations  of  one  government  to  another  ;  it 
will  change  our  system  of  education.  These 
changes  will  be  considered  in  relation  to 
business,  to  national  interests,  and  to  edu- 
cation. The  larger  subject  of  government 
and  international  relations  can  only  be 
touched  upon  briefly,  but  the  effect  of  the 
new  epoch  is  very  important,  and  its  influ- 
ence in  shaping  the  duties  of  government 
must  not  be  overlooked.  The  group  of  new 
professions  which  are  now  coming  into  life 


12  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

will  be  reviewed  and  their  proper  influence 
on  work  outside  of  professional  lines  ex- 
plored. The  general  demands  of  education 
in  the  new  epoch  will  be  considered,  and 
some  suggestions  will  be  made  as  to  the 
best  methods  of  meeting  these  demands. 


II 

BUSINESS 

The  manufacture  of  power  has  entirely 
changed  all  methods  of  communication.  The 
railroad  has  replaced  the  stage  coach ;  the 
steamship  has  supplanted  the  graceful  sail- 
ing vessel;  and  the  telegraph  has  supple- 
mented the  laggardly  mail.  AH  this  hns been 
the  work  oLihe^ engineer. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  century,  to  travel 
at  the  rate  of  one  hundred  miles  a  day  was 
so  difficult  a  thing  that  few  people  were 
willing  to  undertake  it ;  now  eight  hundred 
miles  can  be  accomplished  with  little  fatigue 
in  twenty-four  hours,  and  even  this  speed 
has  been  materially  exceeded.  The  first 
President  of  the  republic  spent  weeks  go- 
ing from  his  home  in  Virginia  to  take  the 
oath  of  office  in  New  York  ;  to-day  there  is 
no  part  of  our  country,  except  Alaska,  from 


14  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

which  a  citizen  cannot  reach  the  national 
capital  in  less  than  six  days.  If  we  consider 
simply  the  time  taken  to  travel  personally, 
neglecting  the  other  methods  of  communi- 
cation, in  which  much  greater  speed  has 
been  attained,  every  part  of  the  country  has 
now  become  nearer  the  most  distant  section 
than  Boston  was  to  Richmond  one  hundred 
years  ago ;  this  is  what  the  railroad  has 
done. 

Only  sixty  years  ago  the  entire  business 
on  the  ocean  was  done  by  sailing  vessels. 
They  had  improved  in  size,  speed,  and  model 
since  Columbus  crossed  in  his  caravels,  but 
the  only  power  to  propel  them  was  still  the 
uncertain  action  of  the  wind.  A  good  east- 
ward voyage  across  the  Atlantic  consumed 
twenty  days,  while  the  return  voyage  usually 
took  at  least  twice  that  time.  This  was  the 
quickest  method  of  communication  between 
America  and  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  It 
was  only  under  very  exceptional  conditions 
that  any  one  could  leave  an  American  port 
and   reach   some    of   the    nearer  ports   in 


BUSINESS  15 

Europe  and  return  in  as  short  a  time  as 
two  months,  and  this  was  true  not  only  of 
men  and  women,  but  of  mails  and  every 
kind  of  communication.  To-day  it  is  pos- 
sible to  cross  the  Atlantic  and  return  in  less 
than  two  weeks.  The  usual  time  occupied 
by  passenger  steamers  in  a  round  voyage, 
including  the  time  which  they  wait  in  port 
on  both  sides  the  Atlantic,  and  including 
voyages  to  as  distant  ports  as  Bremen  and 
Hamburg,  is  now  four  weeks,  while  the 
steamers  of  one  of  the  leading  steamship 
lines  are  making  a  round  voyage  every  three 
weeks.  The  entire  circuit  of  the  globe  can 
be  accomplished  in  less  time  than  was  com- 
monly necessary  in  the  early  years  of  the 
century  for  a  hurried  trip  to  a  near  Euro- 
pean port  and  return. 

The  mails  follow  the  same  course  as  pas- 
sengers ;  they  are  taken  on  the  fastest  ships 
and  the  fastest  railroad  trains,  but  they 
have  the  advantage  that  they  are  transferred 
from  train  to  train  and  from  train  to  ship 
at  the  quickest  speed,  and  are  free  from  the 


i6  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

delays  of  inspection  and  sometimes  of  quar- 
antine which  annoy  passengers.  The  cost 
of  sending  a  letter  to  the  most  distant  part 
of  the  globe  is  only  one  fifth  as  much  as 
the  cost  of  sending  it  from  one  state  to 
another  in  the  early  days  of  the  republic. 

Great  as  these  changes  are,  from  a  busi- 
ness point  of  view  the  effect  of  the  tele- 
graph is  still  greater.  It  has  been  able  to 
annihilate  time  in  communication  between 
different  towns,  states,  and  countries  ;  there 
is  no  important  business  centre  in  any  part 
of  the  globe  to  which  a  message  cannot  be 
sent  and  a  reply  received  within  twenty- 
four  hours,  the  delays  generally  being  due 
not  to  the  time  occupied  in  transmission  or 
delivery,  but  to  the  fact  that  the  rotation 
of  the  earth  and  the  different  times  of  light 
and  darkness  make  the  business  day  in  our 
continent  simultaneous  with  the  silent, 
dark  hours  of  sleep  in  populous  Asia. 

The  result  of  this  quick  communication 
has  been  an  absolute  change  in  all  methods 
of  doing  business.    Formerly  each  commu- 


BUSINESS  17 

nity  was  a  unit  by  itself  ;  it  handled  its  own 
business ;  its  people  seldom  went  outside 
of  its  own  limit ;  and  such  luxuries  as  were 
obtained  from  a  distance  were  brought  at 
long  intervals  either  by  their  owners  or 
by  people  specially  charged  with  handling 
them.  The  food,  dress,  and  all  the  habits 
of  each  community  were  dependent  on  its 
immediate  surroundings.  If  the  soil  and 
climate  were  adapted  to  wheat,  the  white 
bread  of  the  present  day  was  a  common 
food,  but  in  other  regions  where  corn  and 
rye  grew  better,  wheat  bread  was  seldom 
seen.  Homespun  garments  were  the  usual 
wear ;  the  luxuries  of  imported  fruits  were 
unknown.  The  merchant  in  a  seaport  sent 
his  ship  to  sea  in  charge  of  a  supercargo 
whom  he  recognized  as  a  capable  business 
man,  loaded  with  a  cargo  which  that  officer 
was  to  sell,  and  with  the  proceeds  of  which 
he  was  to  make  purchases  for  the  return 
voyage.  The  chances  were  that  from  the 
time  the  ship  left  till  it  returned  nothing 
would  be  heard  of  it.    The  capital  invested 


i8  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

in  the  cargo  was  absolutely  locked  up,  and 
the  merchant  knew  little  or  nothing  of  the 
success  of  his  venture  until  the  ship,  return- 
ing from  a  voyage  of  perhaps  a  year,  was 
sighted  off  the  harbor.  It  was  in  those  days 
that  people  talked  of  what  they  would  do 
when  their  ship  came  in.  To-day  any  such 
voyage  is  absolutely  impossible.  A  com- 
merce, of  a  tonnage  before  which  that  of 
the  old  supercargo  days  becomes  insignifi- 
cant, is  done  by  regular  lines  of  steamers 
sailing  to  almost  every  part  of  the  world,  on 
regular  schedules,  from  which  they  seldom 
vary  more  than  one  or  two  days,  and  whose 
arrival  at  every  port  is  known  at  every 
other  port  at  which  they  touch,  within 
twenty-four  hours  of  the  time  they  reach 
there.  The  sailing  fleet  of  to-day  no  longer 
goes  out  with  ventures  under  the  charge  of 
supercargoes,  but  the  ship  takes  a  load  of 
goods  for  which  freight  is  paid,  and  which 
is  consigned  to  some  merchant  in  the  port 
to  which  it  sails,  where  the  ship  again  loads 
for  another  port ;  the  captain  sails  the  ship. 


BUSINESS  19 

which  is  simply  a  means  of  transportation ; 
the  business  is  handled  by  merchants  in  the 
several  ports,  and  every  one  of  these  mer- 
chants has  the  means  of  knowing  what 
goods  are  in  demand,  and  what  prices  they 
will  bring  in  every  other  port  in  the  world. 
Commercially  the  whole  earth  has  already 
become  a  single  unit,  in  every  part  of  which 
business  can  be  directed  from  every  other 
part. 

This  is  what  the  manufacture  of  power 
has  accomplished  by  its  improvement  in 
methods  of  transportation  and  communica- 
tion alone.  No  nation  can  live  by  itself ;  it 
is  a  part  of  the  whole  commercial  world  ;  it 
can  be  politically  independent  of  other 
countries,  but  it  cannot  be  independent  of 
the  general  laws  which  govern  trade  and 
commerce.  Even  if  it  desired  to  do  so,  it 
would  not  be  allowed  to  keep  clear  of  the 
developments  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  very  system  of  commercial  credits 
which  played  so  important  a  part  in  all 
international  commerce  thirty  years  ago  is 


20  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

now  passing  away  ;  regular  steamship  lines 
and  telegraph  cables  have  changed  the  prac- 
tice ;  the  commercial  standing  of  every  firm 
can  be  known  everywhere,  and  the  aid  of 
the  few  great  houses  is  no  longer  needed  ; 
an  event  which  would  impair  the  standing 
of  any  important  business  house  in  an  in- 
land American  city  may  be  felt  in  eastern 
Asia. 

The  manufacture  of  power  has  effected  at 
least  an  equal  change  in  all  varieties  of  manu- 
factures. Homespun  garments  have  disap- 
peared, complicated  machinery  directed  by 
few  hands  produces  nearly  every  manufac- 
tured product  which  is  essential  to  man.  The 
spinning  wheels,  which  were  a  necessary  part 
of  our  great-grandmother's  households,  are 
now  kept  only  as  curiosities  in  bric-a-brac 
decorations,  while  the  housewife  who  could 
weave  even  her  own  supply  of  linen  would 
be  very  hard  to  find. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  into  the  details 
of  this  change.  The  result  has  been  accom- 
plished by  substituting  for  the  muscle  of 


BUSINESS  21 

arm  and  leg  the  power  which  the  steam 
engine  or  the  turbine  wheel  provides,  power 
which  is  fed  on  coal  at  five  cents  a  bushel 
instead  of  power  fed  on  wheat  at  eighty 
cents,  or  which  is  furnished  free  in  the  slopes 
of  rivers. 

This  is  not  merely  the  case  with  cloths 
and  fabrics  ;  it  is  true  of  every  kind  of  manu- 
facture and  every  kind  of  work.  Power  has 
so  reduced  the  price  of  all  the  little  articles 
which  enter  into  our  daily  life  that  no  one 
can  afford  to  make  them  himself.  In  the 
older  parts  of  the  country  there  are  old 
barns  the  frames  of  which  were  so  made 
that  the  boards  could  be  fastened  in  without 
nails ;  when  they  were  built  the  price  of  nails 
was  more  than  ten  times  what  it  is  now, 
while  the  value  of  a  workman's  time  was 
only  about  one  third  its  present  value. 

The  development  of  iron  manufacture 
shows  what  has  been  done.  Only  twenty 
years  ago  nothing  typified  the  strain  of  hu- 
man labor  more  than  the  row  of  furnaces  in 
which  the  puddlers,  by  muscular  effort  and  in 


22  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

glaring  heat,  slowly  drew  together  the  par- 
ticles of  soft  metal  into  the  spongy  puddle- 
ball  from  which  wrought  iron  was  forged  and 
rolled.  To-day  the  Bessemer  converter  and 
the  open-hearth  furnace  have  spoken  the 
doom  of  wrought  iron,  which  is  disappearing 
before  the  less  costly  steel,  and  there  is 
nothing  more  striking  about  a  great  steel 
plant  than  the  absence  of  men.  Ingots, 
blooms,  billets,  and  finished  product  seem  to 
make  themselves,  while  the  few  men  who 
stand  around  appear  to  police  the  machinery 
rather  than  to  labor. 

It  was  common  in  country  districts  in  the 
early  part  of  the  century  to  find  families  who 
bought  almost  nothing ;  their  food  was  all 
raised  on  their  farms,  while  the  clothing  and 
all  the  household  linen  was  of  wool  or  flax 
raised  at  home,  spun  and  woven  by  the 
mothers  and  daughters  of  the  family.  To- 
day it  is  still  possible  to  find  places  where 
people  live  well  and  where  all  the  food  is 
raised  at  home,  but  in  the  whole  United 
States  it  is  doubtful  whether   a   hundred 


BUSINESS  23 

families  can  be  found  who  do  not  buy  their 
clothing  and  most  of  their  household  goods. 

The  results  may  be  very  briefly  stated. 
Cheap  manufactured  power  does  the  work ; 
a  few  intelligent  hands  direct  the  machinery; 
a  day's  labor  expended  in  other  ways  will  buy 
ten  times  as  much  cloth  or  any  other  manu- 
factured article  as  the  good  hands  of  our 
capable  grandparents  could  make  in  a  day. 

Perhaps  the  manufacture  of  power  has  had 
less  influence  in  agriculture  than  in  anything 
else,  but  even  here  the  effect,  has  been 
enormous.  In  the  first  place,  it  has  filled  the 
world  with  a  great  variety  of  agricultural 
machinery,  which  has  reduced  the  labors  of 
the  farmer  to  a  small  fraction  of  what  they 
formerly  were,  till  the  same  man  can  accom- 
plish with  these  tools  four  or  five  times  as 
much  as  he  could  do  without  them.  But 
there  is  another  remarkable  change.  The 
crops  of  every  part  of  the  world  have  become 
available  for  the  rest  of  the  world  ;  a  failure 
of  crops  in  one  country  is  known  immediately 
ten  thousand  miles  away  ;  a  surfeit  of  crops 


24  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

in  one  country  is  known  with  equal  prompt- 
ness ;  prices  are  regulated  not  by  immedi- 
ate home  demand,  but  by  the  supplies  and 
demands  of  the  world,  modified  by  cost  of 
transportation  and  a  few  other  complica- 
tions well  understood  everywhere  by  deal- 
ers. The  farmer  of  the  present  day  feels  all 
this.  He  has  ceased  to  be  able  to  live  from 
his  farm  alone.  To  maintain  his  family  with 
the  luxuries  and  habits  which  people  now 
think  necessary  he  must  draw  upon  all  parts 
of  the  world,  and  it  is  only  by  selling  his 
crops  that  he  can  pay  for  what  he  so  pur- 
chases. In  the  older  farming  districts  this 
may  apply  to  little  more  than  clothing  and 
a  few  unnecessary  luxuries,  but  in  the  newer 
districts  it  is  otherwise.  On  the  prairies 
west  of  the  Missouri  the  farmer  raises  little 
but  grain  and  stock ;  everything  else,  even 
the  fuel  to  keep  him  warm  in  winter  bliz- 
zards, must  be  bought. 

The  general  effects  already  accomplished 
by  the  manufacture  of  power  may  be  briefly 
stated.    Every  part  of  the  civilized  world 


BUSINESS  25 

now  draws  its  supplies  from  every  other  part 
of  the  world.  Even  the  savage  or  barbarous 
regions,  which  get-  nothing  from  outside 
their  own  country,  are  forced  to  render  their 
contributions  to  civilized  lands.  Prices  are 
fixed  by  the  whole  world,  not  by  any  one 
community,  the  cost  of  transportation  and 
tariff  charges  being  simply  additions  to  the 
cost  of  the  article  somewhere  else.  Further- 
more, every  civilized  family  must  buy  a  large 
portion  of  what  it  consumes,  and  practically 
all  but  farmers  must  buy  everything  they 
consume.  If  the  price  of  wheat  rises  in 
Liverpool,  it  rises  on  every  farm  in  the 
United  States ;  if  a  great  surplus  is  pro- 
duced in  India  or  Argentina,  the  price  falls 
in  European  markets  and  on  every  farm  in 
the  United  States. 

It  is  the  glory  of  the  new  epoch  that  it  has 
reduced  the  cost  of  almost  every  article  of 
important  use  in  modern  life ;  it  is  the  crown- 
ing merit  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  it 
has  made  cheap  so  many  things  which 
in  our  fathers'  times  were  dear.    The  older 


26  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

inhabitants  remember  the  pinched,  under- 
fed look  of  a  large  portion  of  our  people,  in 
the  early  days  of  the  century,  when  their 
wages  would  not  provide  them  with  either 
adequate  food  or  suitable  clothing.  Such 
people  may  still  be  seen,  but  there  are  few  of 
them  among  the  plump,  well-clad  people  of 
to-day.  It  is  a  rarer  thing  to  see  children 
barefoot  now  than  it  was  to  see  them  with 
shoes  on  fifty  years  ago.  Let  no  one  find 
fault  with  the  lowering  of  prices  of  those 
articles  which  are  necessary  for  the  common 
support  of  all,  of  food,  of  fuel,  or  of  ordinary 
clothing. 

The  manufacture  of  power  has  cheapened 
all  the  necessities  of  life  ;  it  has  done  so 
by  substituting  inanimate  force  for  human 
muscle  and  strength  ;  and  it  has  done  so  by 
rendering  the  products  of  every  part  of  the 
world  available  in  every  other.  Great  as  this 
work  is,  it  is  not  the  whole ;  the  change  is 
elevating  mankind,  and  putting  the  individ- 
ual in  a  better  position  than  he  was  in  be- 
fore.  A  man's  wages  are  determined,  not 


BUSINESS  27 

by  what  he  can  do  himself,  but  by  what  he 
can  have  done.  The  character  of  his  work 
has  risen  ;  his  average  pay  is  better. 

One  other  thing  must  be  observed ;  the 
gain  is  accruing  to  civilized  nations.  Sav- 
age and  barbarous  nations  are  made  to  con- 
tribute their  share  towards  the  comforts  of 
the  civilized  without  receiving  much  return. 
This  cannot  continue.  Savage  and  barba- 
rous people  disappear  before  the  stronger 
arms  of  the  more  civilized.  A  few  people 
are  elevated,  more  of  them  are  crushed.  It  is 
a  constant  struggle  for  supremacy  in  which 
the  nation  which  has  the  greatest  resources, 
the  greatest  strength,  and  understands  best 
how  to  manufacture  and  use  power,  always 
comes  out  ahead.  To  do  this  it  must  know 
what  every  other  land  is  doing ;  it  must  use 
the  tools  which  every  country  has  provided ; 
it  must  avail  itself  of  the  work  of  all.  There 
was  a  time  when  nations  could  shut  them- 
selves up  within  their  own  limits  and  do  very 
well.  It  amounted  to  little  more  than  ex- 
cluding some  foreign  trade,  which  at  best 


28  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

was  small ;  the  whole  world  was  nearly  sta- 
tionary ;  the  improvements  made  in  foreign 
countries  amounted  to  so  little  that  the  work 
done  at  home  was  all  that  was  needed. 
Japan  lived  in  this  way  for  centuries,  with 
laws,  practices,  and  currency  entirely  unlike 
anything  now  in  the  world.  Gold  and  silver 
were  kept  in  circulation  together  at  a  valu- 
ation in  which  gold  was  only  four  times  as 
high  as  silver.  The  manufacture  of  power 
has  rendered  everything  like  this  absolutely 
impossible.  There  is  no  race  or  people  so 
great  that  it  could  afford  to  shut  itself  out 
for  ten  years  from  what  is  going  on  else- 
where. The  simple  result  would  be  that 
after  a  decade  of  stagnation  it  would  find 
itself  remanded  to  a  secondary  position 
among  the  nations  of  the  world,  and  become 
a  servant  where  it  should  have  been  a  master. 
The  lessons  of  history  must  be  studied 
as  showing  the  mistakes  of  the  past,  not  as 
giving  precedents  to  be  followed  now.  The 
works  and  doings  of  the  past  are  not  those 
of  the  present.    History  gives  us  a  record  of 


BUSINESS  29 

what  has  been  done,  but  no  more.  It  would 
be  as  wise  to  cite  the  habits  of  savage  life 
as  the  ways  which  civilized  nations  should 
follow,  as  to  make  the  practice  of  the  begin- 
ning of  this  century,  before  the  effect  of 
the  manufacture  of  power  had  been  felt,  the 
standard  of  the  present  day. 

In  the  race  which  we  are  now  in  the  midst 
of,  which  the  manufacture  of  power  is  open- 
ing, new  influences,  new  appliances,  new 
powers,  and  new  forms  of  education  appear 
every  day  ;  only  by  constant  effort,  constant 
intercourse,  continual  study,  and  vigorous 
achievements  can  any  country  use  the  tal- 
ents which  are  now  before  it.  If  the  Amer- 
icans are  to  make  the  best  use  of  their 
America,  they  must  call  to  their  aid  the 
work  which  the  brains  of  Europe,  and  be- 
fore long  those  of  Asia,  will  contribute  to 
the  general  benefit  of  mankind. 

There  are  other  laws  than  those  which 
are  enacted  by  legislative  bodies,  whether 
those  laws  be  expressed  in  congressional 
enactments,  in  judicial  decisions,  or  in  that 


30  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

organic  law  which  has  come  to  be  called 
constitutional.    In  history  the  laws  of  re- 
ligion have  perhaps  played  a  greater  part 
than  the  civil  laws  of  states.    Many  of  these 
religious  laws  have  been  the  work  of  design- 
ing priests  or  wild  impostors,  but  the  preach- 
ing of  Peter  the  Hermit  carried  the  young 
men  of  Europe  to  Syria,  and  the  trumpet  of 
the  Prophet  spread  Islam  ism  over  the  early 
home  of  Christianity.    There  are  the  laws  of 
logic  and  mathematics,  which  are  absolute 
and  fixed;  it  is  beyond  any  power,  either 
human  or  supernatural,  to  set  them  aside ; 
not  even  the  Deity  can  change  the  sum  of 
two  numbers.   The  laws  of  trade  are  at  least 
as  important  as  legislative  enactments  ;  they 
involve  the  arguments  of  logic,  the  truths  of 
mathematics,  and  a  knowledge  of  the  vari- 
ous natural  conditions  which  have  made  the 
trade  of  the  world  possible.   From  their  very 
nature  these  laws  must  be  international,  ex- 
cept in  some  country  which  would  set  itself 
up  alone  and  sell  its  nineteenth-century  birth- 
right. 


Ill 

CAPITAL 

The  human  mind  has  been  defined  as  dif- 
fering from  that  of  animals  in  being  the  only- 
mind  which  can  make  thought  an  object  of 
thought.  This  is  the  metaphysician's  method 
of  looking  at  it.  From  the  point  of  view  on 
which  our  argument  has  been  developed,  the 
difference  between  man  and  the  lower  ani- 
mals may  be  said  to  be  that  man  alone  has 
the  capacity  to  use  tools.  Fire,  the  bow  and 
arrow,  and  pottery  were  among  man's  earliest 
tools.  The  use  of  powerful  tools  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  development  of  the  new  epoch. 
Every  variety  of  tool  is  substituted  for  the 
muscles  and  animate  forces  which  were  used 
before.  The  whole  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  man  from  his  primitive  weakness  has 
been  the  history  of  the  development  of  his 
tools.    Furthermore,  the  new  epoch  differs 


32  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

from  all  preceding  epochs  in  that  it  uses 
tools  of  great  size  and  cost.  Several  hundred 
thousand  dollars  have  been  spent  for  a  single 
steam  hammer,  a  single  hydraulic  press,  or  a 
single  train  of  tools,  in  a  modern  steel  plant, 
and  each  of  these  is  but  a  single  machine 
among  a  multitude  of  others  necessary  to 
equip  the  whole  mill.  More  than  two  million 
dollars  has  been  paid  for  a  single  passenger 
ship.  The  aggregation  of  many  freight  steam- 
ers makes  the  fleets  which  have  so  greatly 
reduced  the  cost  of  water  transportation. 
The  great  railroad  systems  are  simply  tools 
for  land  transportation.  It  is  only  by  the 
use  of  these  great  tools  and  by  great  com- 
binations of  smaller  tools  that  the  element 
of  human  labor  has  been  so  largely  elimi- 
nated from  the  cost  of  production  and  the 
extraordinary  accomplishments  of  the  new 
epoch  made  possible.  Though  the  manufac- 
ture of  power  gives  practically  unlimited 
power  where  and  when  we  need  it,  the  cost 
of  the  machines  to  manufacture  and  use 
that  power  must  be  in  some  measure  pro- 


CAPITAL  33 

portionate  to  its  amount ;  but  the  larger  the 
tool  or  the  greater  the  combination  of  smaller 
tools,  the  less  the  amount  of  human  labor  re- 
quired to  direct  these  tools  in  proportion  to 
the  power  which  they  develop  or  use.  This 
is  the  great  secret  of  modern  manufactures  ; 
it  is  this  which  has  enabled  the  fairly  paid 
labor  of  northern  Europe  to  fill  the  markets 
of  Asia  with  manufactured  goods,  although 
the  workman  in  Asia  may  earn  only  a  tenth 
as  much  as  the  European  ;  it  is  this  which 
now  makes  it  possible  for  the  United  States, 
paying  the  highest  wages  in  the  world,  to 
compete  with  European  manufacturers  in  the 
most  important  products,  and  has  made  the 
price  of  steel  about  one-fifth  less  in  Pitts- 
burg than  in  Glasgow. 

It  is  not  many  years  since  a  furnace 
which  would  produce  a  hundred  tons  of  pig 
iron  in  twenty-four  hours  was  considered 
large.  The  new  plant  of  the  Carnegie  Steel 
Company  at  Duquesne,  near  Pittsburg,  con- 
sists of  four  furnaces,  each  of  which  pro- 
duces a  little  more  than  five  hundred  tons  of 


34  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

pig  iron  in  twenty-four  hours,  the  whole  out- 
put being  over  two  thousand  tons,  with  the 
result  that  the  bill  for  labor  at  the  furnace 
has  been  reduced  to  about  six  per  cent,  of 
the  value  of  the  metal ;  but  the  cost  of  this 
plant,  with  all  its  machinery  and  labor- 
saving  devices,  was  measured  by  millions. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  nearly  every  op- 
eration by  which  the  full  advantages  of  the 
new  epoch  are  realized.  Great  results  in 
economy  and  production  are  only  obtained 
by  a  thorough  equipment  to  produce  them 
and  by  a  correspondingly  large  investment. 
Large  aggregations  of  capital  have  be- 
come a  necessary  feature  of  the  new  epoch. 
In  no  other  way  can  the  tools  and  appli- 
ances necessary  to  develop  its  capacity  be 
obtained.  This  aggregation  of  capital  means 
one  of  two  things,  —  either  the  concentra- 
tion of  great  wealth  in  the  hands  of  indi- 
viduals, or  the  collection  of  the  wealth  of 
many  in  corporate  ownership.  The  two  are 
gradually  becoming  combined ;  individual 
manufacturers  are  generally  availing  them- 


CAPITAL  35 

selves  of  legal  provisions  to  place  their 
affairs  under  the  protection  of  corporate 
ownership  ;  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  the 
concentration  of  the  greater  part  of  the 
stock  of  a  corporation  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  men  or  even  a  single  individual.  This 
tendency,  however,  results  in  a  concentra- 
tion of  control  and  management  rather 
than  in  a  real  concentration  of  ownership. 
However  great  the  wealth  of  individuals 
and  the  amount  of  property  concentrated 
in  a  few  hands,  the  wealth  of  these  indi- 
viduals may  be  much  less  in  the  aggregate 
than  the  savings  and  small  capital  of  people 
of  small  or  moderate  means ;  and  when 
these  people  are  working  for  wages,  as 
nearly  all  of  them  are,  they  have  no  use  for 
their  savings  or  small  capital.  This  small 
capital,  though  the  owner  may  not  under- 
stand what  really  becomes  of  it,  is  used  by 
the  corporations  and  by  the  wealthy  men 
who  are  carrying  on  the  great  manufactur- 
ing, transportation,  and  other  active  works 
of  the  country.    The  capital  of  the  nominal 


36  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

owners  and  the  nominal  capital  of  cor- 
porations is  generally  very  much  less  than 
is  required  to  conduct  the  business.  The 
other  money  is  borrowed  ;  borrowed  from 
small  investors,  from  savings  banks,  and 
other  financial  institutions ;  borrowed  at 
rates  of  interest  which  are  low  in  propor- 
tion as  the  security  is  large.  All  of  this 
borrowed  money  has  a  claim  on  the  capital 
of  the  corporation  and  on  the  wealth  of  the 
individual  manufacturer  before  any  profits 
can  be  distributed.  The  apparent  owners 
may  take  the  larger  profits,  but  they  assume 
the  risks ;  the  ultimate  ownership  may  be 
said  to  be  with  the  owners  of  the  borrowed 
money,  who  must  always  be  protected,  even 
at  the  entire  loss  of  every  other  interest. 

Theoretically  it  would  seem  that  the 
ideal  method  of  concentrating  capital  would 
be  by  cooperation,  so  that  the  small  capi- 
talists and  the  operatives  might  be  the 
actual  and  responsible  owners,  entitled  to 
divide  among  themselves  the  profits  of  the 
enterprise.    It  is  possible  that  some  method 


CAPITAL  37 

of  accomplishing  this  result  will  ultimately 
be  worked  out ;  if  it  has  been  done  suc- 
cessfully heretofore,  it  has  only  been  on 
such  rare  occasions  that  they  have  little  in- 
fluence on  the  general  conduct  of  affairs. 
But  though  apparent  cooperative  owner- 
ship may  not  exist,  real  cooperation  does. 
It  exists  through  the  agencies  of  savings 
banks  and  other  similar  organizations,  which 
receive  as  deposits  the  savings  of  the  work- 
ers and  lend  them  out  to  swell  the  capi- 
tals of  the  producing  organizations  ;  it  exists 
in  the  systems  of  preferred  securities,  as  in 
the  case  of  railroad  and  other  corporate 
bonds,  which  are  entitled  to  their  interest  as 
an  absolute  charge,  or  in  the  case  of  pre- 
ferred stocks,  which  are  entitled  to  their 
dividends  before  any  profits  can  go  to  the 
common  stockholders.  The  results  are  very 
far  from  perfect,  and  have  by  no  means 
reached  their  full  development,  but  the  real 
ownership  is  much  more  widely  distributed 
than  the  workers  generally  know. 

The  management  of  these  corporations  is 


432939 


38  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

one  of  the  principal  duties  of  the  new  epoch, 
and  the  duties  of  such  management  are  en- 
tirely changing  the  conditions  of  business 
success.  The  work  of  the  manager  is  to 
handle  tools ;  it  is  to  manufacture  rather  than 
to  trade.  While  the  products  must  be  sold, 
the  greatest  skill  must  be  shown  in  getting 
the  largest  results  of  which  the  tools  are 
capable.  In  old  times  fortunes  were  gener- 
ally made  by  people  who  had  some  special 
advantage  over  others  in  the  information 
which  they  possessed.  Such  was  the  case 
with  merchants  trading  with  distant  coun- 
tries. They  bought  at  low  prices  in  the  East 
goods  which  they  sold  at  high  prices  at 
home ;  they  kept  to  themselves  the  differ- 
ence in  these  prices  ;  the  distant  people  from 
whom  they  bought  knew  nothing  of  what 
they  did  with  the  goods;  the  people  at  home 
to  whom  they  sold  them  had  no  idea  of  what 
the  goods  cost.  It  was  the  general  charac- 
teristic of  the  merchant,  from  the  earliest 
times,  to  keep  his  knowledge  secret,  and  to 
make  the  best  bargain  he  could.  This  method 


CAPITAL  39 

of  conducting  trade  is  virtually  at  an  end ; 
the  conditions  of  the  new  epoch  render  it 
impossible.  There  will  soon  be  no  secrets  of 
trade  by  which  these  profits  can  be  made  ; 
knowledge  of  what  is  going  on  anywhere  in 
the  world  will  be  open  to  all,  and  any  one 
who  desires  to  do  so  can  learn  any  specific 
thing.  The  profits  of  the  new  epoch  must 
be  made,  not  by  buying  cheap  and  selling 
dear,  but  by  reducing  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion. The  most  successful  man  will  not  be 
the  one  who  has  the  shrewdest  salesman  to 
dispose  of  his  goods,  but  the  one  who  can 
manufacture  his  wares  more  cheaply  than 
any  one  else  engaged  in  the  same  work. 
The  most  successful  transportation  line  will 
not  be  the  one  whose  agents  are  most  active 
in  securing  business,  but  the  one  which  is 
the  most  closely  handled,  which  can  carry  its 
freight  at  a  less  cost  to  itself  than  any  com- 
peting line.  Permanent  success  will  depend 
not  on  commercial  drummers,  but  on  the 
civil  engineer ;  not  on  the  shrewd  guesses 
of  the  so-called  business  man,  but  on  the 


40  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

accurate  knowledge  of  the  manager  who 
knows  what  his  tools  are,  who  knows  what 
it  costs  to  produce,  who  knows  the  defects 
of  his  plant  and  the  features  in  which  it  may 
be  improved,  who  in  fact  is  applying  all  the 
intelligence  of  an  educated  mind,  not  to  get- 
ting the  better  of  some  other  man  who  may 
know  a  little  less,  but  to  getting  the  best 
work  possible  for  himself  and  his  employers 
out  of  what  he  has  to  work  with. 

The  management  of  the  corporations 
which  will  own  the  great  tools  of  the  next 
century  seems  likely  to  be  the  great  duty  of 
the  active  man,  of  the  man  who  is  to  make 
the  records  of  the  future.  As  these  tools  be- 
come larger  and  the  demands  upon  them 
greater,  the  responsibility  and  the  honor 
which  belongs  to  the  successful  manage- 
ment of  such  interests  will  become  more 
fully  recognized.  The  sharp  mercantile 
spirit  must  gradually  go  down  ;  it  is  already 
doing  so.  Careful  skilled  management  is  the 
only  thing  which  can  produce  permanent  re- 
sults.   The  business  of  the  new  epoch  will 


CAPITAL  41 

be  manufacturing  and  banking  rather  than 
trading.  Good  and  bad  times  must  be  ex- 
pected, but  they  will  be  less  common  as 
business  trickery  decreases  and  as  the  world 
attaches  less  weight  to  commercial  guesses. 
But  a  proper  management  of  corporations 
must  recognize  the  existence  of  such  periods 
of  prosperity  and  depression  ;  it  must  recog- 
nize that  while  its  own  work  is  permanent 
and  not  temporary,  the  demand  for  its  pro- 
ducts is  in  a  measure  variable ;  it  must  re- 
member that  the  owners  who  always  insist 
on  complete  division  of  immediate  profits 
must  ultimately  fall  behind,  and  that  the 
extra  profits  of  the  good  times  must  be  used 
to  maintain  the  plant  and  put  it  in  a  condi- 
tion to  tide  over  bad  times.  Every  manufac- 
turing plant,  every  steamship,  and  every  rail- 
road is  simply  a  tool.  It  has  no  value  except 
in  its  capacity  to  produce ;  improvements 
are  constantly  being  made,  and  as  these  im- 
provements are  made,  the  parts  which  are 
superseded  must  be  discarded. 

The  relations  between  the  ownership  and 


42  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

the  management  of  corporations  have  not 
yet  been  settled.   The  new  epoch  opens  as  an 
era  of  corporations,  and  these  relations  are 
gradually  being  fixed.  The  old  rule  of  equity, 
that  any  one  handling  the  property  of  another 
was  a  trustee  and  had  no  right  to  use  that 
property  for  his  own  benefit,  is  fundamen- 
tal, and  must  always  govern  the  management 
of  corporations,  f,  In  a  corporation  there  are 
three  elements  at  work,  —  ownership,  man- 
agement, employees,  —  the   ownership   in- 
cluding not  only  the  nominal  owners  but  all 
the  ultimate  ownership,  which  often  extends 
to  the  employees.    Ownership  is  very^  much 
more   scattered    than   commonly   appears. 
The  employees  are  the  mechanics  and  la- 
borers who  handle  the  machines  and  do  the 
comparatively  small  amount  of  manual  labor 
which  machinery  has  not  yet  mastered.   The 
managerJsJlie--trustgeJor  both  parties  ;  he 
must  understand  the  tools  that  he  uses  and 
get  the  best  work  out  of  them  that  he  can 
for  the  owners  ;  he  must  also  understand  the 
relations  between  those  tools  and  the  men 


CAPITAL  43 

that  work  them,  and  see  that  the  workmen 
are  competent  and  cared  for.  The  rights  of 
ownership  are  the  rights  of  property,  which 
seem  to  be  the  foundation  of  all  civil  gov- 
ernment. The  manager  is  the  trustee  for  this 
ownership.  The  rights  of  the  employees  are 
the  rights  of  men  and  women  who  are  pro- 
fiting, and  must  be  allowed  to  profit,  by  the 
developments  which  the  manufacture  of 
power  has  rendered  possible,  and  to  whom 
must  ultimately  accrue  the  increased  leisure 
and  comfort  which  the  substitution  of  me- 
chanical power  for  muscles  renders  pos- 
sible. The  owners  and  the  workers  both 
have  rights  ;  the  managers  have  principally 
responsibilities. 

There  is  another  feature  which  must  not 
be  overlooked.  The  necessary  aggregations 
of  capital  and  the  necessary  extensions  of 
corporate  ownership  and  management  will 
have  an  important  effect  which  many  may  de- 
plore, but  which  seems  to  be  inevitable.  It 
is  one  of  the  changes  which  necessarily 
occur  in  the  passage  of  races  from  one  stage 


44  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

of  civilization  to  another,  in  which  some  of 
the  best  features  of  the  older  life  pass  away, 
leaving  a  deplorable  void,  while  the  new 
conditions,  with  their  new  virtues,  are  being 
developed.  The  new  epoch  must  reduce  the 
number  of  people  who  work  by  themselves  ; 
it  must  reduce  the  number  of  people  who 
seem  to  be  entirely  their  own  masters,  and 
who  pursue  their  lives  on  independent  lines, 
and  it  must  increase  the  number  of  salaried 
employees,  the  number  of  men  who  are  work- 
ing for  fixed  wages,  and  who  are  apparently 
dependent  on  others.  Its  development  will 
wipe  out  the  small  manufacturers  ;  they  can- 
not compete  against  the  great  concerns.  It 
must  wipe  out  many  of  the  small  traders 
and  dealers  whose  business  has  always  been 
that  of  middle-men.  In  fact,  these  changes 
make  men  members  of  communities,  mem- 
bers of  working  organizations,  members  of 
what  has  been  called  an  army  of  workers, 
but  necessarily  deprive  them  of  many  of  the 
conditions  which  have  hitherto  done  most 
to   produce   strong    individual    characters. 


CAPITAL  45 

Were  this  all  it  would  certainly  be  an  evil. 
The  loss  of  independence  is  a  great  loss  ;  it 
is  always  regarded  with  regret.  Whatever 
his  vices  and  wickedness,  and  they  have 
been  enormous,  there  is  a  noble  element 
about  the  life  of  the  savage  man  which  will 
live  in  literature  and  song  long  after  his 
sins  are  forgotten.  The  strong  features  of 
New  England  country  life,  with  its  combi- 
nation of  manual  labor  and  high  intelligence, 
which  bred  the  men  who  started  the  Revo- 
lution, call  for  the  highest  admiration  and 
praise,  in  spite  of  the  physical  pain  and  suf- 
fering which  wore  out  so  many  of  these 
people  before  they  had  passed  middle  life. 
But  no  one  would  voluntarily  go  back  to  the 
conditions  under  which  our  grandparents 
were  born  ;  still  less  would  he  adopt  the  life 
of  the  noble  savage.  It  is  premature  to  say 
where  the  compensation  for  the  loss  of 
individualism  and  personal  independence 
will  be  found,  but  we  may  be  sure  that  such 
compensation  will  come.  It  may  be  in  the 
greater  amount    of   leisure  which  all  men 


46  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

will  have  when  human  labor  is  reduced  as 
that  of  machines  increases.  It  may  be  that 
it  will  be  found  in  the  higher  degree  of  skill 
and  education  which  must  characterize  in 
these  days  of  machinery  all  classes  of  labor. 
It  may  be  that  it  will  come  from  the  gen- 
eral benefit  which  attends  the  immolation  of 
the  individual  in  the  whole  and  enables  him 
to  recognize  that  he  has  a  share  in  what 
every  one  else  is  doing.  Whatever  form 
this  compensation  may  take  we  may  be  sure 
that  it  will  come.  It  may  be  only  after  a 
severe  struggle,  but  the  laws  which  control 
the  development  of  the  new  civilization  are 
inevitable  and  cannot  be  resisted.  The  fu- 
ture good  of  our  race  lies  in  utilizing  them 
to  the  utmost  possible  extent,  and  not  in 
trying  to  retain  the  good  features  of  condi- 
tions which  are  passing  away. 


IV 

GOVERNMENT 

In  the  new  epoch  there  must  be  a  great 
increase  in  the  variety  of  the  duties  of 
governments.  There  will  be  a  great  exten- 
sion of  the  geographical  limits  over  which  a 
single  government  can  exercise  immediate 
and  direct  control. 

In  early  times  the  functions  of  govern- 
ment were  really  but  two  :  the  protection 
of  the  people  against  foreign  enemies,  which 
meant  the  conduct  of  war,  and  the  protec- 
tion of  the  people  from  domestic  enemies, 
which  meant  police  and  the  whole  system 
of  both  criminal  and  civil  law.  This  is  not 
the  place  to  amplify  these  duties  nor  to 
consider  the  different  forms  of  government 
which  have  performed  these  duties.  It  may, 
however,  be  noted  that  the  foreign  and 
domestic  functions,  even  of  despotic  gov- 


48  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

ernments,  have  usually  been  so  distinctly 
marked,  that  when  a  government  has  failed 
entirely  in  protecting  itself  and  its  people 
and  passed  out  of  existence  before  a  victo- 
rious enemy,  the  domestic  provisions  have 
been  recognized  by  the  conqueror  and  car- 
ried on  with  little  change.  The  right  to 
carry  on  war  and  the  duty  of  protecting 
and  governing  the  people  carry  with  them 
the  right  to  provide  the  means  of  doing  so. 
This  right  includes  in  war  the  right  of  the 
victor  to  levy  an  indemnity  on  the  con- 
quered, a  right  which  was  formerly  held  to 
include  absolute  confiscation,  reduction  to 
slavery,  and  even  extermination.  This  right 
in  domestic  affairs  covers  taxation  in  its 
various  forms  and  with  its  various  substi- 
tutes ;  in  its  broad  application  it  includes 
the  right  to  collect  revenue  and  the  right  of 
conscription.  The  right  of  conscription  in 
modern  civilized  nations  is  confined  to  mili- 
tary service,  but  it  is  a  power  which  has 
been  extended  to  forced  labor  on  all  vari- 
eties of  public  works.     Incidental  to  this. 


GOVERNMENT  49 

though  it  marks  a  more  advanced  condition, 
is  the  right  to  coin  and  issue  money. 

These  were  practically  all  the  earlier  func- 
tions of  government,  though  other  rights 
and  powers  have  often  been  assumed,  es- 
pecially by  the  more  despotic  forms.  Fur- 
thermore, governments  have  usually  been 
more  or  less  linked  with  religions,  a  rela- 
tion which  has  been  one  of  the  most  potent 
influences  in  history,  the  influence  of  the 
priests  on  the  rulers  having  often  exceeded 
the  power  of  the  rulers  over  the  priests,  and 
the  duties  of  education  and  religion  being 
often  confounded. 

A  departure  from  old  limits  of  govern- 
ment and  recognition  of  a  really  new  func- 
tion is  the  post  office,  whose  introduction 
preceded  the  dawn  of  the  new  epoch  by  two 
or  three  centuries,  but  whose  general  ex- 
tension to  communication  with  all  parts  of 
the  world  for  the  benefit  of  every  member 
of  the  community  is  of  a  very  recent  date. 
It  seems  hard  to  recognize  that  there  were 
no  mails  in  the  Roman  Empire,  and  that  even 


so  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

to  this  day  there  is  no  general  government 
mail  service  in  the  Empire  of  China.  Two 
thousand  years  ago  the  young  wife  who 
followed  her  husband  to  a  distant  colony, 
whether  one  of  the  Greek  colonies  on  the 
Mediterranean  or  at  a  later  date  the  out- 
posts which  Rome  scattered  much  farther, 
bade  farewell  for  life  to  all  her  friends  and 
relations,  from  whom  she  might  never  hear 
again.  The  change  of  old  friends  and  sur- 
roundings for  new  ones  was  absolute  and 
complete.  To-day  a  European  emigrant  who 
settles  in  America,  in  Australia,  or  in  south- 
ern Africa,  is  in  constant  communication 
with  the  home  from  which  he  came ;  and  this 
constant  communication,  at  once  keeping 
up  the  friendships  of  the  old  and  gradually 
bringing  them  into  contact  with  the  friend- 
ships of  the  new  dwelling-place,  must  have 
great  influence  in  unifying  and  consoli- 
dating relations  which  are  of  much  more 
than  a  personal  character. 

Another  duty  of  governments,  not  wholly 
new  but  yet  distinctive  of  the  new  epoch,  is 


GOVERNMENT  51 

that  of  sanitation.  Something  of  this  kind 
has  been  done  in  cities  for  an  indefinite 
period.  It  was  especially  marked  in  the  days 
of  Rome,  where  the  sewer  built  in  the  time 
of  the  Tarquins  still  carries  the  drainage  of 
the  Eternal  City  to  the  Tiber,  and  where 
aqueducts  built  in  the  days  of  the  emperors 
still  supply  far  better  water  than  is  often  to 
be  had  in  Europe.  But  with  the  increased 
knowledge  and  capacity  of  the  new  epoch, 
the  duties  of  the  government  in  caring  for 
the  health  of  the  people  have  become  very 
greatly  increased.  Water  supply  is  not  con- 
fined to  the  more  important  cities,  but  is  ex- 
tending even  to  small  towns.  Water  supply 
must  always  be  followed  by  a  sewerage 
system,  and  the  modern  sewerage  system 
must  not  only  take  away  the  sewage,  but 
dispose  of  it  and  utilize  it.  Other  duties  fol- 
low. They  are  being  assumed  perhaps  too 
rapidly.  Lighting  public  ways  is  a  duty  of 
cities,  and  it  may  be  that  the  supply  of  light 
and  heat  for  private  consumers  may  yet  be 
considered  a  government  duty.     In  fact,  the 


52  THE  NEW  EPOCH 

extensions  of  the  duties  of  government  in 
the  new  epoch  are  too  general  and  too  great 
to  be  definitely  predicted. 

Another  duty  which  governments  are  as- 
suming is  that  of  education.  In  old  times 
this  duty  was  only  recognized  in  the  form 
of  a  state  religion ;  and  though  the  priests 
were  the  custodians  of  literature,  science, 
and  art,  as  they  were  then  understood,  it 
was  not  their  policy  to  disseminate  education 
widely.  The  importance  of  general  educa- 
tion, especially  in  those  countries  which  had 
free  governments,  was  appreciated  before 
the  dawn  of  the  new  epoch.  It  may  have 
had  much  to  do  with  the  invention  which 
led  to  the  manufacture  of  power ;  but  be 
that  as  it  may,  the  substitution  of  mechan- 
ical for  human  power  calls  for  general  educa- 
tion. It  leaves  more  time  for  the  average 
man  to  study,  and  it  demands  a  higher  order 
of  intelligence  in  the  man.  The  provision 
of  an  education  has  been  assumed  to  be  a 
proper  function  of  government.  It  began 
with  the  free  public-school  system,  which  is 


GOVERNMENT  53 

now  universal  in  our  country  and  is  extend- 
ing around  the  world.  Its  next  development 
was  the  library ;  and  it  will  not  be  long  be- 
fore every  town  considers  it  as  much  its 
duty  to  provide  a  free  public  library  as  to 
provide  free  schools.  A  further  development 
is  in  progress,  and  boards  of  public  educa- 
tion are  beginning  to  provide  free  lectures 
to  supplement  the  school  system. 

The  promotion  of  trade  has  been  assumed 
by  governments,  and  this  involves  the  care 
of  harbors,  improvements  of  navigation, 
and  many  other  engineering  works,  which, 
though  perhaps  originally  justified  on  mili- 
tary grounds,  have  gradually  been  extended 
until  their  development  for  peaceful  trade 
is  much  greater  than  for  ships  of  war. 

The  tools  of  the  new  epoch  are  already 
being  used  in  the  conduct  of  foreign  affairs, 
and  the  relations  of  one  nation  to  another 
are  being  handled  at  home,  the  foreign  repre- 
sentatives being  little  more  than  the  agents 
through  whom  telegraphic  and  other  dis- 
patches are  sent.    The  possibility  of  geo- 


54  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

graphical  extensions  of  governments  in  the 
new  epoch  is  even  greater  than  the  addition 
of  new  functions.  It  is  absolutely  essential 
to  a  satisfactory  government  that  no  long 
interval  should  elapse  between  the  need  of 
action  and  action  itself ;  between  the  issu- 
ance of  instructions  and  the  execution  of 
such  instructions.  Various  methods  have 
been  adopted  to  overcome  this  difficulty. 
The  delegation  of  power  to  viceroys  and 
others  was  the  method  in  use  in  the  em- 
pires of  old  and  in  Asia  to-day ;  the  method 
of  representation  came  later,  and  was  the 
only  method  by  which  a  single  popular  gov- 
ernment could  be  extended  over  any  con- 
siderable area  of  country.  The  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  preceded  the  opening 
of  the  new  epoch,  and  its  fundamental  fea- 
ture is  that  it  leaves  the  execution  of  all 
local  government,  which  demands  quick  ac- 
tion, in  the  several  States,  which  thus  far 
are  considered  independent  nations,  while 
it  provides  for  a  representation  of  every 
community  at   the   centre  of  the  general 


GOVERNMENT  55 

government.  It  is  the  most  perfect  device 
ever  made  for  the  extension  of  a  govern- 
ment by  the  people  over  a  great  area  of  coun- 
try. The  manufacture  of  power,  however, 
has  virtually  annihilated  distance.  With  the 
present  condition  of  steam  navigation  it  may 
be  said  that  there  is  no  seaport  in  the  world 
which  cannot  be  reached  from  any  other 
seaport  in  a  period  not  much  exceeding 
thirty  days.  It  is  true  this  could  not  be  done 
by  any  regular  line  of  transportation,  but 
it  could  be  done  in  an  emergency  by  the 
use  of  special  ships.  The  railroad  system 
has  now  brought  every  place  in  the  United 
States,  excepting  Alaska,  within  less  than 
one  week  of  every  other  place.  The  com- 
bination of  the  steamship  and  railroad  ser- 
vice may  within  another  century  make  it 
possible  to  go  from  every  place  to  any  other 
place  on  the  planet  in  about  three  weeks. 
The  telegraph  goes  beyond  this,  and  it  is 
now  not  only  possible  but  the  actual  prac- 
tice to  know  in  every  civilized  city  on  the 
earth  what  has  taken  place  on  the  preceding 


56  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

day  in  every  other  city.  These  changes  have 
removed  the  conditions  which  formerly  lim- 
ited governments.  If  a  single  government 
could  be  organized  to  handle  the  affairs 
of  the  entire  earth  and  give  equal  rights 
and  like  laws  to  all  races  and  conditions  of 
men,  the  physical  difficulties  in  enforcing  the 
acts  of  such  government  would  be  much  less 
than  those  of  handling  the  thirteen  States 
at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  our  Constitu- 
tion. 

Whether  such  universal  government  will 
ever  exist  is  a  question  with  which  we  have 
nothing  to  do.  So  far  as  physical  condi- 
tions are  concerned,  the  manufacture  of 
power  makes  it  possible  that  the  world  in 
the  new  epoch  may  be  governed  in  this 
way ;  whether  it  ever  will  be,  and  whether 
it  would  be  desirable  for  it  to  be,  are  differ- 
ent things.  It  seems  more  probable  that 
the  increased  respect  which  different  na- 
tions will  have  for  each  other  as  they  come 
to  know  each  other  better,  as  each  one 
learns  to  adopt  the  better  features  of  others 


GOVERNMENT  57 

and  to  discard  its  own  worst  features,  may 
lead  to  the  existence  of  a  few  great  nations 
which  will  manage  their  own  affairs  sepa- 
rately, but  which  will  bear  to  each  other  re- 
lations like  those  which  exist  in  a  peace- 
ful family.  At  present  the  obstacles  to  the 
unification  of  the  human  race  are  great ; 
they  are  an  inheritance  from  the  past  which 
the  new  epoch  will  gradually  obliterate. 
The  first  of  these  is  that  of  race.  Civilized 
races  differ  from  each  other.  The  civilization 
of  Asia  is  the  oldest  in  the  world,  but  the 
two  most  populous  districts  of  Asia,  China 
and  India,  are  separated  by  a  mountain  bar- 
rier more  impassable  than  a-ny  ocean,  and 
their  civilizations  were  on  independent  lines 
and  entirely  unlike.  The  civilization  of  Eu- 
rope came  later,  but  it  developed  with  no 
knowledge  of  what  had  been  done  in  Asia, 
Each  of  these  civilizations  represents  a 
development  from  savage  life,  but  they 
are  on  different  lines.  The  races  have  civi- 
lized apart,  and  each  of  them  differs  from 
the  others  more  than  either  does  from  the 


58  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

absolute  savage.  All  the  differences,  great 
as  they  are,  may  disappear  when  the  races 
come  to  know  each  other  thoroughly.  An- 
other obstacle  in  the  way  of  unification  is 
language.  This  also  will  in  time  disappear. 
A  third  great  difference  is  religion,  the 
power  of  which  has  been  enormous  in  all 
ages  of  the  world ;  and  while  fetichism  and 
all  merely  idolatrous  religions  seem  to  dis- 
appear at  once  before  their  spiritual  con- 
querors, the  great  religions  which  have  real 
life  and  spirit  in  themselves,  and  which  ap- 
peal to  the  better  qualities  of  the  mind  and 
soul,  do  not  yield  to  each  other,  and  the 
lines  of  distinction  are  to  this  day  as  plainly 
marked  as  ever.  Whether  this  division  is 
to  continue  with  the  knowledge  which  the 
new  epoch  is  opening,  remains  to  be  seen. 
If  it  does  continue  it  must  be  accompanied 
by  that  tolerance  of  each  other  which  should 
ever  mark  the  relationship  between  intelli- 
gent educated  people. 

These  mental  and  intellectual  obstacles 
will  be  much   more  difficult  to  surmount 


GOVERNMENT  59 

than  the  purely  physical  obstacles,  but  if 
they  ever  are  surmounted  the  conquest  will 
be  complete,  while  the  mountains  and 
oceans  will  continue,  lines  of  past  demarca- 
tion overcome  by  the  work  of  the  engineer, 
but  still  remaining  to  help  men  to  under- 
stand the  history  of  the  ages  which  are  just 
entering  their  final  period. 

It  is  unwise  to  predict  too  much,  but  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  effect  of  the  new  epoch 
will  be  to  reduce  greatly  the  number  of  na- 
tions in  the  world ;  that  these  nations  will 
ultimately  be  large  but  compact,  perhaps 
not  more  than  a  dozen  in  all ;  that  another 
effect  will  be  to  increase  the  duties  and 
responsibilities  of  government  ;  that  there 
will  be  great  changes  in  the  forms  of  gov- 
ernment, though  what  these  will  be  we  can- 
not tell ;  that  the  needs  of  the  people  who 
are  to  live  in  the  new  epoch,  wherever  they 
may  be  and  whatever  their  form  of  govern- 
ment, will  be  discipline  and  education,  —  the 
discipline  which,  whether  in  the  individual, 
the  family,  or  the   nation,    preserves   that 


6o  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

control  under  which  alone  the  best  results 
can  be  obtained,  and  the  education  which 
alone  fits  man  to  direct  the  great  powers 
of  the  new  epoch  for  the  best  good  of  his 
race. 


1 


V 

CIVIL    ENGINEERING 

The  new  epoch  has  opened  an  entirely 
new  set  of  professions.  The  old  professions 
were  primarily  divided  into  two  classes,  the 
military  and  the  civil,  and  of  the  latter  only 
three  were  recognized,  — divinity,  law,  and 
medicine.  These  three  were  called  liberal 
professions,  and  their  members  were  sup- 
posed to  be,  and  generally  were,  better  edu- 
cated, though  not  always  more  thoroughly 
trained,  than  the  men  who  followed  other 
callings.  The  demands  of  the  new  epoch 
are  such  that  educated  men  are  required 
everywhere.  They  are  needed  to  design  the 
tools  by  which  power  is  manufactured  and 
is  utilized  ;  they  are  needed  to  manage  the 
affairs  of  the  corporations  whose  capital  is 
invested  in  the  great  variety  of  tools,  and 
which    have  been   referred  to ;    they  are 


62  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

needed    to   perform    the   increased    duties 
which  governments  are  now  assuming. 

Seventy  years  ago  civil  engineering  was 
defined  as  the  art  of  directing  the  great 
sources  of  power  in  nature  for  the  use  and 
convenience  of  man.  ^  This  definition  was 
embodied  in  the  charter  of  the  institution 
which  has  done  more  than  any  other  to 
unite  the  profession  and  to  give  it  the  stand- 
ing it  is  now  attaining.  It  was  made  in  the 
very  infancy  of  the  new  epoch,  within  sixty 
years  of  the  time  when  Watt  developed  his 
first  steam  engine.  Had  the  profession  re- 
mained unnamed  till  the  end  of  the  century, 
it  is  possible  that  its  various  departments 
might  have  been  classed  separately,  and 
that  what  is  now  called  by  a  single  name 
would  have  been  divided  into  several  profes- 
sions. The  definition  was  followed  by  a  list 
of  objects  and  applications,  but  it  was  ex- 
pressly stated  that  its  real  extent  was  limited 
only  by  the  progress  of  science,  and  that  its 

1  Thomas  Tredgold,  1828  ;  subsequently  embodied  in 
charter  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers. 


CIVIL   ENGINEERING  63 

scope  and  utility  would  be  increased  with 
every  discovery,  and  its  resources  with  every 
invention,  since  its  bounds  were  unlimited, 
as  must  also  be  the  researches  of  its  pro- 
fessors. This  definition  is  broad  enough  to 
embrace  every  department  of  work  which 
undertakes  the  development  and  use  of  any 
of  those  physical  powers  through  which  the 
new  epoch  is  now  subjecting  all  varieties 
of  matter  to  the  dominion  of  mind. 

The  constitution  of  the  American  Society 
of  Civil  Engineers  fixes  as  a  requirement 
for  full  membership  "  the  ability  to  design 
as  well  as  direct  engineering  works."  The 
English  definition  and  the  American  re- 
quirement taken  together  explain  what  con- 
stitutes a  civil  engineer.  His  business  is  to 
design  the  works  by  which  the  great  sources 
of  power  in  nature  are  directed.  His  works 
are  not  built  for  themselves  nor  as  com- 
memorative monuments  ;  they  are  made  to 
direct  the  powers  of  nature  for  the  use  of 
man.  Every  engineering  work  is  built  for  a 
special  ulterior  end ;  it  is  a  tool  to  accom- 


64  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

plish  some  specific  purpose.  Engine  is  but 
another  name  for  tool.  The  business  of  an 
engineer  relates  to  tools.  A  civil  engineer 
must  be  capable  of  designing  as  well  as 
handling  tools.  The  highest  development 
of  a  tool  is  an  engine  which  manufactures 
power.  All  the  great  possibilities  of  this 
profession  come  from  the  existence  of  such 
tools. 

It  is  a  common  error  to  think  of  civil 
engineering  as  a  coordinate  branch  of  a  gen- 
eral profession  with  many  other  branches  ; 
to  class  it  with  mechanical  engineering, 
with  hydraulic  engineering,  with  sanitary 
engineering,  with  mining  engineering,  with 
electrical  engineering,  or  with  any  other 
specific  branch.  The  name  of  every  special 
branch  of  engineering  has  a  distinctive 
meaning ;  the  mechanical  engineer  deals 
with  machines  ;  the  hydraulic  engineer,  with 
water  ;  the  mining  engineer,  with  mines ; 
the  sanitary  engineer,  with  drainage  ;  and  the 
railroad  engineer,  with  railroads.  The  word 
"  civil  "  has  no  such  distinctive  meaning ;  it 


CIVIL   ENGINEERING  65 

shows  only  that  civil  engineering  is  the  work 
of  the  citizen  and  not  the  work  of  the  sol- 
dier. Civil  engineering,  in  its  true  meaning, 
embraces  every  special  branch  of  engineer- 
ing. The  professional  limitation  which 
should  be  applied  to  the  civil  engineer  is 
that  he  must  be  a  man  who  in  his  own  de- 
partment can  design  as  well  as  direct.  He 
must  have  that  control  over  his  work  which 
nothing  but  intelligent  knowledge  of  the 
subject  gives.  He  may  be  a  railroad  builder, 
he  may  be  a  skillful  surveyor,  he  may  be  a 
mechanical  engineer,  or  he  may  follow  any 
other  specialty ;  but  whatever  he  does  he 
must  do  it  not  as  a  skillful  workman  but 
as  one  qualified  to  design.  Any  man  who  is 
thoroughly  capable  of  understanding  and 
handling  a  machine  may  be  called  a  mechan- 
ical engineer,  but  only  he  who  knows  the 
principles  behind  that  machine  so  thoroughly 
that  he  would  be  able  to  design  it  or  to  adapt 
it  to  a  new  purpose,  whatever  that  purpose 
may  be,  can  be  classed  as  a  civil  engineer. 
Any  skillful   sewer-builder  and   pipe-fitter 


66  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

may  claim  to  be  a  sanitary  engineer,  but 
only  the  man  who  approaches  his  work  with 
the  intelligent  knowledge  of  the  conditions 
which  sanitation  involves  can  be  classed  as 
a  civil  engineer.  Any  man  who  knows  how 
to  work  a  mine  may  be  a  mining  engineer, 
but  only  he  who  understands  why  he  works 
his  mine  as  he  does  can  be  called  a  civil 
engineer.  Any  well-practiced  electrician 
may  be  classed  as  an  electrical  engineer,  but 
only  one  whose  practical  knowledge  is  based 
on  the  intelligent  study  of  electricity  can  be 
called  a  civil  engineer.  The  business  of 
every  engineer  is  to  handle  tools  ;  the  busi- 
ness of  the  civil  engineer,  whatever  depart- 
ment or  specialty  he  may  follow,  is  to  de- 
sign and  build  those  tools  rather  than  to  use 
them.  The  word  "  tool  "  is  used  in  its  largest 
sense ;  it  may  be  called  engine  if  preferred. 
Any  constructed  thing  whose  principal  ob- 
ject is  to  produce  something  outside  of  itself 
is  a  tool,  whether  that  tool  be  a  brad-awl,  a 
steamship,  or  a  railroad.  Civil  engineering 
embraces  all  branches  of  engineering,  but 


CIVIL   ENGINEERING  67 

the  civil  engineer  differs  from  other  engi- 
neers in  that  he  makes  tools  rather  than 
uses  them.  The  relation  of  civil  engineer- 
ing to  all  other  branches  is  of  the  broadest 
kind  ;  no  branch  of  engineering  is  excluded  ; 
the  only  exclusion  is  based  on  the  individual 
qualifications  of  the  men. 

The  civil  engineer  is  briefly  a  man  who, 
with  knowledge  of  the  forces  and  materials 
around  him,  uses  that  knowledge  in  the  de- 
sign and  construction  of  engineering  works. 
His  business  is  to  design  the  tools  by  which 
the  sources  of  power  in  nature  are  directed 
for  the  use  of  man.  A  body  of  civil  engi- 
neers should  include  the  choicest  minds  in 
every  branch  of  the  engineering  profession. 

Any  civil,  military,  naval,  mining,  me- 
chanical, electrical,  or  other  professional 
engineer,  architect,  or  marine  architect, 
who,  with  knowledge  of  the  great  sources 
of  power  in  nature,  uses  that  knowledge 
in  the  design  and  direction  of  engineering 
works,  is  qualified  to  be  considered  a  civil 
engineer.     Civil    engineering    includes    all 


68  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

branches  of  engineering,  but  not  all  en- 
gineers. It  should  include  every  engineer 
who  applies  a  knowledge  of  the  powers 
of  nature  to  the  design  and  construction  of 
engineering  works.  It  should  include  the 
architect  who  uses  this  knowledge  in  his 
designs  and  constructions ;  but  the  archi- 
tect who  treats  his  profession  as  a  fine  art  to 
decorate  a  construction  which  he  cannot  de- 
sign, belongs  elsewhere.  Intelligent  know- 
ledge of  the  great  powers  in  nature  is  the 
fundamental  requirement  for  a  civil  engi- 
neer. On  this  substructure  a  superstructure 
of  actual  design  and  construction  must  be 
built  to  make  the  complete  professional  man. 
The  civil  engineer  of  the  new  epoch,  the 
epoch  which  he  is  bringing  into  existence 
by  the  manufacture  of  power,  must  be  an  edu- 
cated man.  In  no  profession  will  this  be  more 
necessary.  The  physical  laws  of  power  and 
strength  are  mathematically  exact  and  ad- 
mit of  no  trifling.  As  the  epoch  progresses 
the  requirements  for  each  individual  will 
become  more  complicated.   The  theologian 


CIVIL  ENGINEERING  69 

and  the  metaphysician  may  claim  that  an 
education  based  on  the  laws  of  matter 
leaves  out  the  highest  part  of  existence  ; 
the  biologist  and  the  physician  may  claim 
that  matter  endowed  with  life  is  a  higher 
organism  than  the  inanimate  matter  with 
which  the  engineer  has  to  deal.  But  how- 
ever true  these  claims,  their  laws  have  not 
the  mathematical  rigidity,  the  clear  defini- 
tion, and  the  thorough  discipline  which  mark 
the  laws  with  which  our  profession  works. 
The  engineer  cannot  shield  himself  under 
doctrines  or  theories  which  he  accepts  but 
cannot  understand.  Dealing  with  accurate, 
definite  laws  and  guided  by  the  corrective 
touch  of  physical  nature,  the  education  of 
the  engineer  will  become  more  necessary, 
more  thorough,  and  more  exact  than  that 
of  any  other  professional  man.  This  is  the 
training  which  the  civil  engineer  of  the  new 
epoch  must  have.  This  knowledge  he  must 
have,  or  he  must  be  classed  as  a  workman 
rather  than  a  professional  man. 

The   civil   engineer   of  the   new   epoch 


70  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

must  sink  the  individual  in  the  profession. 
The  engineering  work  of  the  future  must 
be  better  work  than  has  ever  yet  been  done. 
The  best  work  is  never  done  by  separate 
men.  It  is  only  accomplished  when  pro- 
fessional knowledge  so  permeates  all  mem- 
bers of  a  profession  that  the  work  of  one  is 
virtually  the  work  of  all.  The  first  steps 
are  made  by  individuals,  but  the  best  results 
come  later.  In  the  Middle  Ages  Gothic 
cathedrals  were  built  throughout  northern 
Europe.  They  are  exquisite  works  ;  no  mod- 
ern architect  can  approach  their  beauty. 
The  reason  is  that  the  men  who  built  the 
Gothic  cathedrals  worked  together  as  mem- 
bers of  a  guild  which  was  thoroughly  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  building  these  churches. 
In  no  period  of  the  world's  history  has 
marine  construction  had  any  significance 
compared  with  what  it  has  to-day,  and  it  is 
because  the  great  shipbuilders  are  work- 
ing together,  each  having  the  practical  bene- 
fit of  what  they  all  are  doing.  They  are 
working  together  as  members  of  a  profes- 


CIVIL   ENGINEERING  71 

sion  rather  than  as  individuals,  and  their 
work  is  becoming  more  uniform  and  more 
perfect. 

The  civil  engineer  of  the  new  epoch  must 
be  a  specialist.  No  man  can  learn  to  design 
all  the  tools  by  which  the  powers  in  nature 
are  to  be  directed.  The  work  is  too  great 
for  one  man  to  master.  The  best  results 
will  only  be  obtained  by  concentrating  ef- 
fort in  a  single  line.  But  though  the  civil 
engineer  must  be  a  specialist,  his  specialty 
must  not  be  of  a  narrow  kind  ;  he  must  have 
that  general  knowledge  and  training  which 
makes  the  liberally  educated  man.  In  every 
occupation  a  natural  selection  of  men  takes 
place ;  some  follow  the  close  lines  of  the 
work  for  which  they  are  trained,  while  to 
others  this  training  is  but  an  incident  in  the 
early  part  of  their  careers,  and  does  little 
more  than  point  the  general  direction  of 
their  lives.  The  ability  to  deal  with  men 
and  to  direct  the  minds  of  men  is  a  mat- 
ter of  natural  gift  more  than  of  education. 
It  is  so  important  that  when  possessed  in  a 


72  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

high  degree,  all  other  accomplishments  yield 
to  it ;  and  its  possessor,  realizing  that  the 
ability  to  use  several  minds  gives  him  the 
same  advantage  among  his  fellows  that  the 
control  of  additional  power  has  given  among 
races,  will  use  his  '  capacity.  But  the  posi- 
tive training  of  an  education  has  its  value 
for  men  whose  paths  of  life  may  lie  far 
from  the  special  work  for  which  they  were 
trained ;  it  will  at  least  teach  them  the  im- 
portance of  accurate  knowledge.  Too  many 
men  are  contented  to  guess  rather  than  to 
know,  relying  on  personal  tact  to  relieve 
themselves  from  difficulties  when  their 
guesses  are  wrong. 

''^he  civil  engineer  of  the  new  epoch  must 
fill  many  positions  which  are  now  held 
by  men  of  different  training.  The  know- 
ledge of  the  tools,  both  large  and  small, 
which  men  are  using,  must  be  the  strongest 
qualifications  for  their  use.  Accurate  engi- 
neering knowledge  must  succeed  commer- 
cial guesses.  Corporations,  both  public  and 
private,  must  be  handled  as  if  they  were 


CIVIL  ENGINEERING  73 

machines,  and  the  men  who  will  so  handle 
them  will  find  their  best  training  in  the 
education  which  will  make  the  best  civil 
engineers.  These  managers  may  not  be 
called  civil  engineers,  but  civil  engineering 
should  not  find  fault  with  titles ;  the  man  , 
whose  training  has  fitted  him  to  do  the  work 
of  a  civil  engineer  will  not  cease  to  be  one 
if  he  is  promoted  to  a  high  position  of  man- 
agement. 

When  ability  to  rule  meant  ability  to 
defend  against  invasion,  to  maintain  war 
against  foreign  enemies,  government  was  in 
the  hands  of  soldiers.  As  society  became 
more  complicated,  and  a  permanent  admin- 
istration of  civil  matters  more  necessary, 
domestic  affairs  being  more  important  than 
foreign,  the  administration  passed  largely 
into  the  hands  of  lawyers.  The  legal  profes- 
sion was  long  the  only  educated  profession 
whose  members  were  available  for  public 
work.  The  functions  of  government  are 
changing.  The  demands  of  the  new  epoch 
are  not  like  those  of  the  past.    Safety  from 


74  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

foreign  invasion  is  needed  less  than  safety 
from  dangers  which  lurk  within,  — from  the 
poisons,  both  moral  and  physical,  which  en- 
danger concentrated  population  ;  from  bad 
air,  bad  water,  and  bad  construction  ;  from 
corrupt  administration,  and  from  bacteria. 
The  rulers  and  governors,  who  at  first  were 
soldiers,  who  subsequently  were  selected 
from  men  trained  as  lawyers,  must  in  the 
future  be  taken,  at  least  in  part,  from  those 
who  are  educated  in  the  utilization  of  the 
powers  in  nature,  —  from  civil  engineers  and 
the  men  who  are  equipped  with  the  new 
education  for  the  benefit  of  their  country. 
The  duties  of  municipal  government,  or  the 
government  which  is  most  closely  concerned 
with  local  affairs,  must  become  very  much 
like  the  management  of  corporations.  In 
fact,  a  municipality  is  a  public  corporation 
rather  than  a  government,  and  its  duties 
should  be  performed  in  the  same  way  as 
those  of  a  corporation.  The  same  class  of 
men  will  do  the  best  work  for  a  city  that 
will  make  the  best  managers  of  manufac- 


CIVIL   ENGINEERING  75 

turing  corporations.  In  cities  and  in  many 
communities  the  duties  of  the  government 
rest  more  on  good  engineering  than  on  legal 
skill.  The  whole  life  of  the  community  de- 
pends on  appliances  and  conveniences  which 
the  manufacture  of  power  alone  has  made 
possible.  For  all  this  work  the  government 
needs  neither  soldiers  nor  lawyers,  but  men 
educated  in  the  various  departments  which 
come  within  the  broad  definition  of  the  work 
of  the  civil  engineer. 

The  tools  which  civil  engineers  have  to 
build  are  generally  large.  The  physical 
man  is  often  a  tiny  thing  beside  the  work 
which  he  has  to  construct.  Nothing  better 
illustrates  the  power  of  mind  over  matter 
than  the  work  of  this  profession.  Though 
it  deals  with  matter  and  its  work  is  of  a 
material  kind,  it  is  the  mind  which  has 
made  this  matter  give  forth  power ;  it  is  the 
mind  which  is  opening  the  new  epoch,  and 
it  is  by  the  training  of  this  mind  that  the 
civil  engineer  must  prevail.  He  is  the  priest 
of  material  development,  of  the  work  which 


76  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

enables  other  men  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  the 
great  sources  of  power  in  nature,  and  of 
the  power  of  mind  over  matter.  He  is  the 
priest  of  the  new  epoch,  a  priest  without 
superstitions.  But  if  this  profession  is  to  do 
the  good  work  of  which  it  is  capable,  the 
true  spirit  of  individual  immolation  which 
has  characterized  the  devoted  priest  of  all 
ages  must  be  found  among  its  members. 
The  profession  can  only  do  its  future  work 
by  trained  minds  working  together. 


VI 

THE    UNIVERSITY 

Great  as  is  the  effect  which  the  develop- 
ments of  the  new  epoch  are  having  on  the 
engineering  profession,  their  influence  on 
education  is  equally  important.  The  duties 
of  universities  are  being  entirely  changed. 
Great  changes  impose  new  duties  on  the 
institutions  which  are  charged  with  the  in- 
tellectual development  of  the  community. 
No  changes  have  ever  equaled  those 
through  which  the  world  is  passing  now. 
No  institution  has  greater  responsibilities 
at  this  time  of  change  than  those  which  rest 
on  a  university.  The  manufacture  of  power 
has  an  intellectual  as  well  as  a  physical 
effect ;  it  has  separated  power  from  the 
mind  which  must  manage  it ;  it  calls  for 
intelligent  design  and  direction  of  the  mul- 
titude of  works  which  it  has  rendered  pos- 


78  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

sible ;  it  has  equipped  our  generation  with 
tools  for  study  and  investigation  as  well  as 
for  mechanical  work. 

A  university  is  more  than  a  school ;  it  is 
not  merely  a  college ;  still  less  should  it  be 
an  eleemosynary  institution  for  the  benefit 
of  young  men  to  whom  it  can  give  an  edu- 
cation. A  university  owes  its  duty  to  the 
community  as  a  whole,  not  to  individuals 
who  live  in  that  community.  The  endow- 
ment which  a  university  may  receive, 
whether  it  come  from  public  appropriation 
or  from  private  gift,  must  come  to  it  as  to 
a  public  benefactor,  endowed  and  sustained 
in  order  that  the  whole  community  may 
have  the  benefit  of  its  intellectual  guid- 
ance. It  must  not  train  young  men  because 
those  young  men  wish  to  be  scholars,  but 
because  trained  scholars  are  necessary  for 
the  good  of  the  community.  The  individual 
must  be  sunk  in  the  nation  or  state  of  which 
he  is  a  part ;  the  young  men  whom  the  uni- 
versity educates  should  know  that  they  are 
educated  to  be  useful  members  of  a  com- 


THE   UNIVERSITY  79 

munity,  and  not  for  their  own  ends.  The 
real  duties  of  a  university  are  universal ;  it 
is  the  head  of  the  educational  system  of 
the  land,  charged  with  the  high  responsi- 
bilities which  this  position  implies  ;  it  must 
be  the  depository  of  the  lore  which  former 
generations  have  accumulated  and  the  pilot 
of  the  community  in  every  kind  of  intellec- 
tual life;  it  must  preserve  the  records  of 
the  past,  and  it  must  train  the  men  who  are 
to  make  the  records  of  the  future  ;  it  must 
combine  the  work  of  a  museum  with  that 
of  a  school. 

A  collection  of  physical  objects,  though 
those  objects  be  most  rare  and  curious,  does 
not  make  a  museum.  A  collection  classified 
and  arranged  in  the  most  systematic  man- 
ner that  has  ever  been  devised  would  still 
be  incomplete.  It  must  be  a  collection  of 
the  records  of  the  past,  including  that  which 
can  be  stored  only  in  the  mind.  A  classi- 
fied museum,  though  it  include  a  library 
containing  every  book  that  has  ever  been 
written,  would  be  of  no  value  without  the 


8o  THE   iSTEW   EPOCH 

minds  to  use  it.  The  museum  which  forms 
so  important  a  part  of  a  university  must 
include  among  its  collections  a  collection  of 
educated  men. 

The  school  which  is  to  train  the  men 
who  are  to  make  the  records  of  the  future 
must  build  its  special  courses  on  the  foun- 
dation of  an  education  which  teaches  how 
to  use  the  mind.  This  is  the  real  measure 
of  a  liberal  education;  without  this,  the 
men  it  educates  will  be  of  little  value  in  the 
community. 

The  new  epoch  which  the  manufacture 
of  power  is  bringing  forth  makes  new  de- 
mands upon  a  university  —  new  demands 
upon  it  as  a  museum  in  the  large  sense 
which  has  been  stated  ;  new  demands  upon 
it  as  a  school  to  train  the  young  men  whom 
the  community  needs,  and  who  will  make 
the  records  of  the  new  epoch. 

The  new  epoch  has  an  inheritance  from 
older  times.  It  increases  the  work  of  a  uni- 
versity in  its  capacity  of  museum.  In  the 
mere  collection  and  preservation  of  records. 


THE   UNIVERSITY  8i 

the  work  is  greater  in  a  period  of  change 
than  at  any  other  time.  Generally,  in  pass- 
ing from  one  ethnical  period  to  another,  the 
records  of  the  past  have  been  lost.  The 
students  of  the  earliest  life  of  man  have  to 
grope  among  prehistoric  remains,  decipher- 
ing marks  which  seem  almost  as  inani- 
mate as  geological  strata,  and  tracing  their 
uncertain  way  by  analogies  drawn  from 
races  living  to-day. 

The  new  epoch  must  destroy  as  well  as 
build  ;  the  new  civilization  will  wipe  out  the 
conditions  which  precede  it.  The  sav- 
age and  barbarous  tribes  which  now  live 
simultaneously  in  different  parts  of  the 
world  must  disappear.  If  their  habits,  cus- 
toms, and  mental  conditions  are  to  be  re- 
corded, the  work  must  be  done  soon ;  in 
one  or  two  centuries  it  will  be  too  late. 
The  structures  which  represent  the  achieve- 
ments of  many  generations  cannot  be  pre- 
served. A  few  may  be  kept  as  beautiful 
relics,  specimens  in  a  universal  museum. 
But  the   manufacture  of  power  has  made 


82  THE   NEW  EPOCH 

the  demands  of  the  new  epoch  so  differ- 
ent from  those  of  the  old  that  nearly 
everything  which  has  to  be  used  must  be 
built  anew.  The  old  and  the  new  cannot 
exist  together.  It  is  hard  to  realize  how 
rapidly  the  appearance  of  the  whole  earth 
may  change.  Greater  care  of  life  is  a 
feature  of  the  new  epoch.  An  increase  of 
population  at  the  rate  of  one  per  cent,  an- 
nually, which  is  less  than  that  in  European 
Russia,  would  cover  the  entire  land  surface 
of  the  globe,  including  deserts,  mountains, 
and  snow-capped  plains,  with  a  population 
as  dense  as  that  of  Belgium,  in  about  three 
centuries.  In  the  change  through  which 
we  are  now  passing,  a  change  which  will 
leave  no  isolated  tribes  for  the  future,  it  is 
one  of  the  duties  of  the  university  to  see 
that  the  museums  of  the  future  are  stored 
with  the  full  history  of  the  past. 

The  new  epoch  is  characterized  by  great 
material  changes.  In  such  a  time  there  is 
danger  that  natural  science  and  physical 
study   will    overpower   all    other  thought. 


THE    UNIVERSITY  83 

The  treasures  of  philosophy,  of  music  in 
the  broad  Greek  meaning,  and  of  rehgion  in 
the  noblest  sense,  must  be  a  special  charge 
of  the  university. 

Around  the  museum,  of  which  they  will 
form  a  part,  must  be  gathered  the  men 
who  will  collect,  study  and  care  for  what 
it  contains.  The  university  must  train  and 
educate  these  men  to  be  the  curators  and 
scholars  who  will  see  that  record  precedes 
destruction  ;  who  will  take  care  that,  when 
physical  existence  ends,  the  facts  which 
scholars  need  are  preserved,  —  and  who  will 
themselves  be  the  scholars  who  are  to  use 
these  records.  The  education  of  these  men 
must  include  the  intelligent  study  of  the 
delicate  accomplishments  and  refinements 
of  the  past ;  the  new  epoch  may  not  have 
the  grace  and  taste  which  have  marked 
some  inferior  conditions  ;  in  the  creation  of 
beauty,  Europe  and  America  are  to-day  far 
below  the  nations  which  dwelt  around  the 
Mediterranean  two  thousand  years  ago,  or 
the  older  races  which  still  inhabit  Asia.    The 


84  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

Study  of  history  belongs  to  this  department. 
The  training  for  those  professions  which  are 
based  on  history  and  precedent  will  find  a 
place  here.  But  few  of  the  young  men  so 
educated  will  remain  to  form  the  body  of 
educated  men  which  is  an  essential  part 
of  the  university  museum ;  the  majority  will 
seek  other  lives  and  callings.  The  general 
body  of  educated  men,  as  education  was 
once  understood,  the  men  who  are  students 
rather  than  workers,  readers  rather  than 
originators,  who  are  guided  by  what  others 
have  done  rather  than  by  what  they  them- 
selves would  do,  will  be  educated  in  this 
museum. 

This  work  is  much  like  what  the  uni- 
versity has  always  been  doing.  In  this  de- 
partment the  effect  of  the  new  epoch  is  to 
develop  rather  than  to  change;  it  makes 
the  old  work  greater  and  more  important 
than  before  ;  greater  because  there  will  be 
more  workers,  more  to  do,  and  more  tools  to 
work  with  ;  more  important  because  much 
which  cannot  be  done  soon  may  be  lost  for- 


THE   UNIVERSITY  85 

ever,  and  because  the  life  of  a  community 
busied  with  material  development  needs  a 
double  leaven  from  the  educated  past. 

But  the  community  has  needs  for  the  fu- 
ture as  well  as  for  the  past.  The  records  of 
the  past  must  be  preserved  and  studied  by 
that  body  of  educated  men  who  make  the 
society  of  a  university  town  the  most  refined 
and  intelligent  that  is  anywhere  found,  and 
who  give  to  the  precincts  of  a  university  a 
peculiar  attraction  which  exists  in  no  other 
place.  The  records  of  the  future  must  be 
made  by  men  of  different  types  and  different 
habits,  who  are  educated  to  fit  them  for 
active  work,  who  will  exchange  the  plea- 
sures and  quiet  of  the  university  for  the  roar 
of  the  rolling-mill,  the  buzz  of  the  machine- 
shop,  the  obscurity  of  the  mine,  the  bustle 
of  the  railroad,  and  the  harsh  surroundings 
of  many  other  duties.  These  men  must  be 
prepared  to  sacrifice  the  pleasures  of  edu- 
cation as  such,  and  the  delights  of  study  for 
mental  development,  and  spend  their  lives 
where  their  work  calls  them. 


86  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

The  definition  of  civil  engineering  which 
is  incorporated  in  the  charter  of  the  Insti- 
tution of  Civil  Engineers  has  already  been 
quoted,  "the  art  of  directing  the  great 
sources  of  power  in  Nature  for  the  use  and 
convenience  of  man."  The  same  definition 
may  be  accepted  as  measuring  the  duties  of 
the  new  education  which  is  to  train  young 
men  for  active  work  in  the  new  epoch  ;  this 
education  must  qualify  them  to  handle  all 
the  great  sources  of  power  in  nature, 
whether  those  sources  be  animate  or  in- 
animate, whether  the  direction  be  mechani- 
cal or  physiological,  whether  the  work  be 
investigation,  construction,  management,  or 
invention  ;  it  must  be  prepared  to  deal  with 
every  kind  of  matter  of  which  the  world  is 
composed,  with  the  power  associated  with 
such  matter,  and  with  the  laws,  simple  and 
complicated,  which  govern  it ;  the  object 
must  be  to  direct  such  matter  and  power  for 
the  improvement  of  mankind  ;  this  must  be 
the  work  of  the  new  education.  The  civil 
engineer  claims  that  all  this  work  belongs  to 


THE    UNIVERSITY  87 

his  profession,  which  should  include  every 
educated  man  who,  with  a  clear  knowledge 
of  the  laws  which  govern  his  work,  is  han- 
dling the  powers  of  nature,  be  that  work  in 
a  harbor,  a  machine-shop,  a  railroad,  a  mine, 
an  edifice,  or  a  laboratory  ;  the  fundamental 
condition  being  that  the  work  shall  be  that 
of  an  educated  man,  who  knows  how  to 
design  and  to  direct,  in  accordance  with 
nature's  laws  of  construction,  strength,  and 
power. 

There  is  one  profession  whose  age  and 
history  have  given  it  a  rank  by  itself.  Med- 
icine had  an  old  and  honored  name  when 
civil  engineering  was  still  unrecognized.  But 
it  belongs  with  the  new  profession  rather 
than  with  the  older  ones ;  its  work  deals  with 
the  powers  in  nature  for  the  use  of  man. 
It  differs  from  engineering  in  that  it  deals 
with  organic  life,  and  not  with  inanimate 
power.  Its  recent  developments  have  been 
rendered  possible  by  the  same  conditions 
which  have  developed  engineering.  Its  place 
in  a  university  is  with  the  other  branches  of 


88  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

physical  science  in  the  new  education,  rather 
than  in  the  historical  museum. 

The  time  is  not  far  behind  us  when  none 
of  the  occupations  which  strove  to  direct 
and  use  the  sources  of  power  in  inanimate  na- 
ture required  any  high  degree  of  education. 
Practice  and  experience  seemed  to  be  enough. 
Good  sense,  guided  by  precedents,  accom- 
plished what  was  necessary.  While  in  some 
ways  a  man  specially  educated  had  an  ad- 
vantage, it  was  not  enough  to  give  his  work 
the  marked  position  which  belongs  to  an 
educated  profession.  This  is  no  longer  so. 
Within  the  last  half  century  the  whole  con- 
ditions have  changed. 

It  is  not  the  educated  character  of  the 
man,  but  the  educational  needs  of  the  work 
which  makes  an  educated  profession.  The 
work  must  be  such  that  it  can  only  be 
done  by  those  whose  education  has  spe- 
cially qualified  them  for  it.  Natural  ability 
combined  with  education  will  always  be 
greater  than  either  of  the  two  alone ;  but  no 
occupation  can  become  an  educated  profes- 


THE   UNIVERSITY  89 

sion  until  education  gives  the  men  who  fol- 
low it  a  distinct  advantage  over  those  who 
have  not  received  such  education ;  and  no 
profession  will  ever  be  composed  entirely 
of  educated  men  until  the  advantages  of 
education  outweigh  those  of  mere  natural 
ability. 

The  manufacture  and  use  of  power,  though 
in  its  crude  beginning  easily  understood  and 
handled,  has  already  reached  a  point  where 
accurate  knowledge  and  thorough  training 
are  needed  for  the  best  results.  There  is 
not  a  single  department  in  the  manufacture 
or  use  of  power  in  which  the  advantage  of 
a  thorough  education  is  not  felt. 

The  study  of  the  strength  of  materials, 
and  the  mathematical  laws  involved,  is  re- 
quired in  all  structural  work.  The  older 
structures  were  the  gradual  development  of 
experience,  each  builder  inheriting  the  work 
of  his  predecessors.  So  long  as  dimensions 
were  small  and  the  material  generally  exces- 
sive, this  worked  well,  but  modern  engineer- 
ing asks  for  the  least  material  which  can  be 


90  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

used  to  produce  safe  results  ;  the  strains  in 
every  part  of  the  structure  must  be  calcu- 
lated, and  unnecessary  material  removed ; 
the  rule  that  nothing  is  stronger  than  its 
weakest  part  must  be  applied  by  eliminating 
the  material  which  gives  useless  strength. 

Metallurgy  has  become  in  all  its  details  a 
matter  of  refined  investigation.  A  minute 
variation  in  the  amount  of  phosphorus  it 
contains  will  make  the  difference  between 
a  bar  of  steel  which  is  perfectly  safe  for 
structural  purposes  and  one  which  is  treach- 
erous and  may  break  without  warning.  A 
large  portion  of  the  steel  product  of  the 
world  is  now  made  in  furnaces  with  basic 
linings  which  absorb  the  excess  of  phos- 
phorus, and  which  were  introduced,  not  by 
a  practical  iron-master,  but  by  a  chemist, 
who  made  dephosphorization  his  special 
study,  and  sacrificed  his  life  to  the  ardor  of 
his  researches.^ 

The  ordinary  high-pressure  slide-valve 
steam  engine,  such  as  is  used  for  a  sawmill 

1  Sidney  Gilchrist  Thomas. 


THE   UNIVERSITY  91 

in  the  woods,  or  for  a  straw-burning  harvest 
outfit  on  a  Dakota  prairie,  is  a  simple  thing 
which  anybody  can  understand,  but  its  use 
is  only  justified  because  temporary  conven- 
ience is  more  important  than  economy. 
The  marine  engine,  where  power  is  limited 
by  capacity  to  carry  fuel,  is  very  different ; 
scientific  study  and  design  have  reduced  the 
coal  consumption  of  the  best  marine  engines 
to  less  than  a  pound  and  a  half  per  indicated 
horse-power ;  this  has  rendered  possible  the 
speed  of  the  modern  Atlantic  liner  and  the 
extremely  cheap  carriage  of  the  tramp 
freight  steamer.  • 

Electrical  engineering,  and  the  other  pro- 
fessional branches  which  are  multiplying 
rapidly,  require  a  like  scientific  training. 

This  education  is  not  a  simple. one.  A 
smattering  of  knowledge  may  enable  a  man 
to  understand  what  is  going  on,  but  to 
design  and  perfect  the  structures  and  ma- 
chines which  will  give  the  best  results  re- 
quires a  thorough  knowledge  of  laws  whose 
complications  increase  as  their  applications 


92  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

are  extended.  The  strength  of  materials, 
the  chemical  composition  of  substances,  the 
laws  of  heat  and  of  dynamic  energy,  with 
other  equally  important  principles,  enter 
into  almost  every  operation  of  modern  life. 
Every  design  must  be  worked  out  in  accord- 
ance with  the  laws  which  govern  it.  There 
was  a  time  when  Yankee  ingenuity  was 
thought  to  be  equal  to  anything,  and  the 
memory  of  that  time  still  exerts  its  baneful 
influence ;  works  which  required  educated 
engineers  have  been  intrusted  to  ignorant 
men,  and  terrible  disasters  have  followed 
this  perversion  of  trust.  The  laws  which 
govern  the  problems  of  mechanical  and  ma- 
terial devices  are  complete,  and  require 
trained  minds  for  their  solution ;  they  are 
exact ;  they  can  be  demonstrated  absolutely, 
and  a  mistake  may  be  followed  at  once  by 
a  disaster.  There  is  no  place  among  them 
for  the  strange  theories  which,  when  with- 
out the  corrective  influence  of  physical  facts, 
seem  to  prove  intellectual  depravity;  the 
man  engaged  either  in  the  manufacture  of 


THE    UNIVERSITY  93 

power  or  the  utilization  of  its  sources  in 
nature,  can  find  no  refuge  behind  unproved 
theories  or  questionable  practices. 

This  work  is  the  creation  of  an  epoch 
differing  from  the  past  to  such  a  degree  that 
it  may  itself  be  considered  new  ;  the  edu- 
cation which  will  fit  men  to  perform  this 
work  must  also  differ  from  the  old  education. 
The  old  education  teaches  facts  ;  it  is  based 
on  a  knowledge  of  what  has  been  done. 
The  new  education  cares  little  what  has 
been  done,  provided  no  one  ever  wants  to 
do  it  again.  The  men  who  are  to  adapt  the 
great  powers  of  nature  to  the  use  of  man, 
who  are  to  make  the  records  of  the  future, 
must  understand  the  laws  by  which  they 
are  to  do  this,  must  know  how  to  investigate, 
and  how  to  work  themselves,  rather  than 
know  what  work  other  people  have  done. 
No  work  is  good  unless  made  on  correct 
principles,  and  education  must  equip  the 
worker  with  these  principles.  The  educa- 
tion of  the  engineer  is  intended  to  fit  him 
to   construct   and    use   tools   which    serve 


94  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

some  specific  purpose  ;  they  must  be  adapted 
to  their  purpose  and  nothing  else ;  he  must 
be  prepared  to  see  them  thrown  away  when 
their  work  is  done.  The  machine  must  be 
properly  proportioned  ;  the  heavy,  clumsy 
tool  which  requires  unnecessary  power  must 
be  avoided  as  much  as  the  weak  tool  which 
fails  under  its  work.  Furthermore,  this  ed- 
ucation must  be  applied  to  every  class  of 
work ;  to  all  that  great  variety  of  tools  by 
which  the  engineer  utilizes  the  powers  of 
nature  ;  to  those  more  permanent  construc- 
tions by  which  the  architect  would  build 
monuments  for  future  ages. 

As  this  education  becomes  more  general, 
it  will  be  realized  that  the  basis  of  all  true 
beauty  is  adaptation  to  its  purpose  ;  that 
the  decorations  of  the  so-called  fine  arts 
must  be  made  subservient  to  correct  and 
simple  lines  of  construction,  which  they 
would-  emphasize  rather  than  conceal.  The 
false  motto  Ars  celare  artem,  which  really 
means  it  is  good  to  lie,  must  give  place  to  the 
dorious  Veritas.    The  incongruous  absurd- 


THE   UNIVERSITY  95 

ities  of  the  present  day  must  disappear. 
The  engine  frames  of  the  first  Cunard 
steamers  were  decorated  with  Gothic  arches  ; 
beside  the  engines  of  a  modern  steamer 
these  old  machines  have  a  strange  fantastic 
look.  Architecture,  which  as  a  fine  art 
would  consign  itself  to  the  museum,  and 
sometimes,  following  the  rapid  changes  of 
fashion,  seems  to  differ  from  millinery 
chiefly  in  the  want  of  a  beautiful  object  on 
which  to  place  its  novelties,  will  find  its 
highest  development  in  correct  construc- 
tion. 

The  engineering  of  the  new  epoch  must 
be  thoroughly  good.  This  means  the  de- 
velopment of  the  true  professional  idea,  and 
demands  professional  education.  The  best 
work  has  never  been  done  by  separate  men  ; 
it  is  only  accomplished  when  professional 
knowledge  so  permeates  the  whole  body  of 
workers  that  each  member  has  the  benefit  of 
what  all  are  doing.  The  first  steps  in  inven- 
tion and  in  new  developments  are  taken  by 
individuals ;  the  best  work  is  done  later  when 


96  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

the  path  into  which  the  bold  inventor  ven- 
tured alone  is  trodden  by  the  crowd  who 
find  it  their  usual  course.  The  name  of 
Watt  was  immortalized  by  his  successful 
introduction  of  the  steam  engine,  but  there 
are  thousands  of  men  to-day  who  can  build 
better  engines  than  James  Watt  could.  Ma- 
rine construction  owes  its  present  high  con- 
dition to  the  fact  that  ship-building  has 
become  a  profession  in  which  each  builder 
has  the  real  benefit  of  what  all  are  doing. 
There  lived  in  one  of  our  great  cities  an 
engineer  of  marvelous  inventive  skill  and 
world-wide  reputation,  who  in  a  variety  of 
ways  has  left  his  mark  on  the  developments 
of  the  century  ;  his  history  was  a  mixture 
of  great  accomplishments  and  strange  dis- 
appointments ;  but  the  saddest  part  of  the 
whole  was  the  work  of  the  last  years  of  his 
long  life,  when,  alone,  having  little  inter- 
course with  other  men,  he  set  himself  the 
task  of  devising  means  by  which  future  gen- 
erations might  manufacture  their  power 
when  the  supplies  of  fuel  now  in  use  should 


THE   UNIVERSITY  97 

be  exhausted.^  Perhaps  no  engineer  who 
has  ever  lived  was  as  well  qualified  to  solve 
this  problem  as  he  was ;  but  no  man,  how- 
ever great,  can  do  good  work  alone  and 
before  its  time.  When  the  problem  on 
which  he  toiled  for  years  becomes  a  real 
issue,  there  will  be  many  men,  of  far  less 
ability  than  he,  who,  sharing  the  profes- 
sional experience  which  will  come  mean- 
while, will  have  little  difficulty  in  providing 
the  needed  power. 

But  the  best  professional  spirit  demands 
more  than  this.  To  training  and  instruction 
must  be  added  the  spirit  which  alone  makes 
men  worthy  of  the  power  education  gives 
them.  They  must  not  only  know  how  to 
work,  but  they  must  do  it  in  the  spirit  which 
the  best  good  of  the  community  demands. 
The  advance  of  mankind  through  the  savage 
and  barbarous  periods  was  not  continuous. 
Increased  powers  are  susceptible  of  abuse 
as  well  as  use,  and  the  evil  of  the  abuse  has 
sometimes  exceeded  the  good  of  the  use. 

1  John  Ericsson. 


98  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

Thfe  new  epoch  will  be  no  exception ;  its 
universality  has  only  substituted  other  dan- 
gers for  the  barbarian  invasions  which  de- 
stroyed older  civilizations.  The  men  who 
would  sacrifice  their  friends  and  their  coun- 
try for  their  own  selfish  selves  still  live ;  the 
1  ■  greater  their  capacities  the  greater  the  dan- 
ger. Never  before  have  the  opportunities 
for  selfishness  been  so  great,  whether  that 
selfishness  be  devoted  to  acquisition  of  use- 
less wealth,  to  indulgence  in  degrading  lux- 
uries, or  to  the  general  disregard  of  the 
rights  of  others,  which  may  characterize  poor 
and  rich  alike.  In  communities  where  every- 
thing is  organized  on  the  selfish  basis  of 
commercial  life,  these  influences  may  trans- 
form the  great  forces  of  the  new  epoch  into 
powers  of  destruction  from  which  the  world 
will  never  recover. 

There  is  a  capacity  in  the  mind  which  can 
be  developed  to  meet  these  dangers.  The 
antidote  for  these  evils  which  selfishness  be- 
gets is  that  power  which,  working  in  many 
ways  and  for  many  objects,  takes  a  man  out 


THE   UNIVERSITY  99 

of  himself  and  is  called  love,  whether  that 
love  be  for  human  beings,  for  animal  life,  for 
inanimate  objects,  or  for  laws  and  principles, 
which  are  at  least  as  real  as  anything  else. 
The  education  of  the  men  who  are  to  do  the 
work  of  the  new  epoch  must  not  only  train 
them  and  teach  them,  but  must  fill  them 
with  that  interest  and  enthusiasm  which  en- 
genders love. '  This  can  be  done  ;  the  more 
complicated  the  work  and  the  higher  the 
education,  the  more  interest  the  worker 
finds  to  make  him  love  his  work.  Every  man 
who  has  entered  earnestly  into  the  study 
of  the  powers  of  nature,  into  the  design  of 
works  which  are  to  utilize  those  powers,  or 
the  execution  of  the  plans  which  the  world 
is  profiting  by,  knows  that  this  is  true.  The 
ordinary  workman  who  works  for  wages 
only,  does  not  feel  this  love ;  the  professional 
man  whose  profession  is  simply  a  source 
of  income,  is  little  better ;  but  education 
can  be  so  directed  that  no  man  can  really 
enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  work,  for  which 
this   education   has   trained   him,    without 


100  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

caring  more  for  the  work  than  for  the  profit, 
without  an  interest  which  is  really  love. 
The  men  who  are  to  save  the  new  civili- 
zation from  business  trickery,  commercial 
cruelty,  and  selfish  indulgence  must  feel  this 
interest  in  the  work  they  do ;  they  must 
seek  the  best  results  because  they  love  the 
best ;  they  must  do  their  work  because  they 
love  it,  not  perhaps  with  all  their  heart  and 
soul,  but  with  the  full  strength  of  their  intel- 
lectual capacity.  This  love  for  their  work 
has  characterized  the  best  students  and 
investigators  in  all  ages.  With  the  change 
which  the  manufacture  of  power  has  intro- 
duced, it  should  exist  in  every  branch  of 
work  which  deals  with  the  utilization  of  the 
great  sources  of  power  in  nature.  The  uni- 
versity will  fail  in  its  duty  to  the  community 
if  it  does  not  inspire  young  men  with  a  love 
for  their  work. 


VII 

EDUCATION 

The  educational  system  of  our  country  is 
properly  divided  into  four  grades.  It  begins 
with  the  common-school  system  where  chil- 
dren first  begin  to  learn,  and  where  they  get 
the  education  which  every  man  and  woman 
ought  to  have ;  this  much  is  required  by 
law ;  without  it  a  child  grows  up  in  igno- 
rance. Then  follows  the  secondary  school, 
with  a  higher  education  which  no  one  is 
compelled  to  take,  but  an  education  which 
is  generally  sought  for  by  all  who  have  any 
taste  for  study,  and  who  do  not  have  to 
work  for  wages  as  soon  as  they  leave  the 
common  school.  Next  comes  the  college, 
whose  duty  is  to  round  out  the  general 
education,  and  to  equip  the  youth  with  that 
general  knowledge  and  accomplishment 
which  places  him  in  the  rank  of  educated 


ro2  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

men.  The  last  is  the  professional  school, 
with  its  special  training  for  the  vocation  the 
student  is  to  follow.  The  number  who  will 
enter  each  successive  grade  must  always  be 
less  than  those  who  take  the  grade  below. 
The  college  course  is  omitted  by  many  who 
go  directly  from  secondary  to  professional 
schools. 

Of  the  common  school  little  need  be  said 
It  has  become  so  thoroughly  embodied  in 
American  institutions  that  the  younger  gen- 
eration finds  it  hard  to  realize  that  there  is 
any  place  where  it  does  not  exist.  The  sec- 
ondary school  is  another  thing,  although  it 
has  often  been  accepted  as  a  proper  public 
charge.  It  includes  both  high  and  prepara- 
tory schools  ;  the  scholars  in  both  are  of  the 
same  age,  and  the  studies  on  parallel  lines, 
though  the  high  school  is  intended  to  give 
an  education  from  which  boys  will  enter 
business  life,  and  the  preparatory  school 
trains  for  something  which  is  to  follow. 
The  secondary  school  has  one  advantage 
over  any  other :  its  scholars  are  at  the  age 


EDUCATION  103 

in  which  the  mind  is  most  easily  and  most 
thoroughly  trained  ;  the  rudimentary  educa- 
tion of  the  common  school  has  given  them 
some  tools  to  work  with ;  they  are  not  so 
old  that  mental  habits  are  hard  to  form  ;  it 
takes  the  boy  when  he  begins  to  know  the 
difference  between  what  he  is  taught  and 
what  he  thinks  ;  while  there  may  be  no 
period  in  his  school  life  the  studies  of  which 
he  will  remember  less,  there  is  certainly  no 
period  in  which  the  work  has  so  much  effect. 
The  possible  influence  of  a  teacher  in  a  sec- 
ondary school  is  enormous  ;  the  great  prin- 
cipal who  for  fifty  years  was  at  the  head  of 
one  of  these  schools  in  New  England  ^  ex- 
erted an  indirect  power  over  his  whole  coun- 
try which  few  men  ever  had.  Many  a  man 
whose  name  is  now  synonymous  with  great- 
ness traced  the  awakening  of  his  mind  to 
this  teacher. 

The  function  of  the  college  is  different 
The  boy  who  has  begun  to  think  for  him- 
self, whose   tastes   and    habits  are    partly 

1  Benjamin  Abbot,  LL.  D. 


I04  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

formed,  must  here  get  the  general  training 
which  places  him  among  educated  men  ;  a 
training  which,  going  outside  of  particular 
callings,  provides  that  general  equipment 
of  varied  knowledge  which  fits  him  to  as- 
sociate with  men  of  other  occupations,  and 
at  least  to  appreciate  lines  of  work  and  study 
which  he  does  not  follow  himself. 

What  the  college  should  avoid  the  pro- 
fessional school  is  bound  to  do  ;  the  young 
man  comes  here  with  his  plan  of  life  formed, 
he  asks  for  the  special  training  which  will 
fit  him  to  carry  out  his  plan.  The  time  for 
general  education  has  gone  by,  and  the 
duties  of  the  professional  school  are  specific. 

In  earlier  times  there  was  but  a  single 
course  of  education  from  beginning  to  end, 
and  this  was  taken  by  comparatively  few. 
The  working  classes  received  no  education ; 
the  ruling  classes,  who  were  generally  sol- 
diers, received  but  little ;  women  were  given 
none.  Between  the  ruling  and  the  working 
classes  was  the  clerical  body,  the  only  edu- 
cated set,  who  formed  the  clerks  and  writers 


EDUCATION  105 

for  their  more  ignorant  masters  ;  the  Egyp- 
tian officer  of  to-day  need  not  know  how  to 
\  read  and  write  when  he  has  secretaries  to 
do  it  for  him.  But  the  demands  of  education 
have  changed ;  every  profession  and  occu- 
pation calls  for  educated  men,  and  the  edu- 
cation of  to-day  must  fit  them  for  this  work, 
with  all  its  variety.  No  single  curriculum 
can  meet  the  requirements  of  the  new 
epoch  ;  the  universal  scholar  can  no  longer 
exist ;  the  man  who  tries  to  know  every 
thing  must  spend  his  life  in  study  alone, 
with  no  time  left  to  make  use  of  his  accom- 
plishments ;  he  may  be  admired  for  his 
great  learning,  but  his  education  will  be  like 
some  tariffs,  continued  long  after  its  useful- 
ness has  gone.  Every  man  who  would  con- 
tribute what  he  owes  to  the  world  of  which 
he  is  a  part,  must  accept  his  true  position 
in  his  own  department  of  study  and  of  sub- 
sequent work  ;  he  cannot  know  all,  but  he 
can  console  himself  with  the  thought  that 
he  does  not  live  alone,  that  he  is  one  of  a 
community,  and  that  as  a  member  of  such 


io6  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

community  he  has  an  interest  and  a  part  in 
what  all  the  others  are  doing. 

It  is  not  long  since  few  of  the  occupations 
which  are  included  in  civil  engineering  re- 
quired any  high  order  of  preparation.  The 
fact  that  some  of  the  ablest  engineers  in 
the  middle  of  the  century  had  barely  a  com- 
mon-school education  is  sometimes  used  as 
an  argument  against  professional  training. 
These  old  engineers  did  much ;  some  of 
them  were  great  men  ;  they  are  entitled  to 
honor  and  respect ;  they  were  the  pioneers 
of  the  profession  ;  but  there  is  a  great  dif- 
ference between  the  work  of  a  pioneer  and 
the  work  which  follows.  The  pioneer  must 
tread  on  unknown  ground,  he  cannot  be 
educated  in  those  things  which  he  must 
himself  discover;  judgment,  sound  sense, 
and  daring  distinguish  the  work  of  the  pio- 
neer ;  but  the  work  of  his  followers,  who  are 
able  to  study  what  he  could  only  explore,  is 
better  than  his  own.  In  the  romantic  town 
of  Cuernavaca  the  Spanish  conqueror  built 
a  church  whose  massive  roughly  buttressed 


EDUCATION  107 

walls  still  resist  the  thrust  of  the  clumsy 
arched  stone  roof.  On  the  plaza  of  the  city 
of  Mexico  stands  a  great  cathedral,  built 
nearly  two  centuries  later,  which  shows  in 
every  line  of  its  groins  and  domes,  its  col- 
umns and  its  walls,  the  intelligence  of  its 
designer ;  structurally  honest,  it  has  little  in 
common  with  the  fashionable  work  by  which 
our  cities  are  scarred,  but  it  has  a  high  rank 
among  the  noble  buildings  of  the  world.  The 
two  churches  typify  the  work  of  the  pio- 
neer and  the  work  which  should  follow.  An 
established  profession  has  no  longer  pio- 
neers. The  men  who  to-day  are  to  direct 
the  great  powers  of  nature  to  the  use  of 
man,  who  are  to  make  the  records  of  the 
future,  must  understand  the  laws  by  which 
they  arc  to  do  this.  The  greatest  engineer 
is  not  the  man  who  knows  the  most,  but  the 
man  who,  when  confronted  with  a  new  prob- 
lem, can  best  grasp  the  novel  subject,  and 
whose  judgment  will  most  correctly  approve 
or  condemn  his  solution  of  it.  This  is  the 
proper  qualification  for  individual  engineers. 


io8  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

but  even  this  is  not  enough  for  the  profes- 
sion. 

LiberaUty  means  much  the  same  in  edu- 
cation and  in  professions  as  in  anything 
else.  It  means  freedom  from  the  narrow 
boundaries  of  prejudice,  and  it  recognizes 
that  there  is  something  beyond  the  con- 
tracted Hmits  which  bound  the  education  or 
the  profession  of  any  one  man.  The  real 
difference  between  a  liberal  education  and 
a  special  education  is  that  the  first  teaches 
the  student  to  use  his  mind,  and  the  second 
supplies  him  with  information ;  the  man 
who  has  only  a  special  education  may  be 
no  better  than  the  uneducated  man  among 
surroundings  for  which  he  is  not  educated. 
The  distinctive  mark  of  a  liberal  profession 
is  that  its  members  shall  know  enough  of 
matters  outside  their  own  professional  work, 
to  respect,  to  appreciate,  and  in  a  general 
way  to  understand  the  work  of  other  men, 
whether  those  men  belong  to  other  active 
professions  or  to  the  various  educated  call- 
ings which  are  not  given  professional  names. 


EDUCATION  109 

The  education  which  will  keep  civil  engi- 
neering where  it  should  be  —  in  its  rank 
among  the  liberal  professions  —  must  be 
broad  enough  for  its  disciples  to  understand 
and  respect  other  lines  of  life  ;  it  must  make 
it  a  profession  whose  members  will  hold 
their  own  among  other  educated  men,  a  pro- 
fession which  will  have  its  proper  share  of 
writers  and  original  thinkers,  a  profession 
through  which  men  may  rise  to  do  the  most 
influential  work,  and  to  take  the  highest 
places  of  trust  and  honor  in  the  land. 

There  is  a  great  difference  between  the 
work  of  the  museum  and  that  of  a  school, 
between  the  old  and  the  new  education,  be- 
tween the  study  of  the  past  and  the  training 
for  the  future ;  the  education  of  different  in- 
dividuals must  first  divide  into  these  two 
general  directions.  But  there  are  several, 
professions  and  a  multitude  of  occupations 
based  on  the  history  of  the  past,  and 
grounded  on  the  old  education  of  the  mu- 
seum ;  and  there  are  many  vocations  which 
are  gradually  being  grouped  into  separate 


no  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

professions,  and  which  are  grounded  on  the 
scientific  courses  of  the  new  education. 
There  must  be  a  division  first  between  the 
museum  and  the  school,  between  the  new 
and  the  old  education  ;  and  there  must  be 
another  division  when  each  of  these  two 
great  educations  separates  into  many  courses 
leading  in  different  professional  lines.  The 
great  educational  question  of  the  day  is  how 
to  provide  for  these  divisions  of  work  ;  it  is 
a  problem  with  which  our  universities  are 
wrestling ;  it  is  a  problem  which  is  now 
thrown  back  on  the  preparatory  schools, 
whose  work  is  largely  determined  by  the 
colleges  to  which  they  send  their  pupils  ;  it 
finds  its  full  development  in  the  courses  of 
the  professional  schools,  which  must  train 
for  separate  professions  and  specialties. 

The  separation  must  begin  in  the  second- 
ary schools,  but  this  is  a  beginning  rather 
than  more.  Under  the  training  of  these 
schools,  boys  begin  to  show  their  natural 
aptitudes,  and  some  of  their  studies  first  take 
a  direction  which  may  lead  to  the  classic 


EDUCATION  III 

shades  of  the  museum  or  the  more  active 
work  of  modern  life.  During  the  college 
years  the  first  separation  must  be  completed ; 
the  work  of  the  museum  and  of  the  school 
must  diverge.  A  college  course  should  be 
framed  with  reference  to  the  .mental  apti- 
tude of  the  student  and  the  general  order 
of  life  which  he  is  likely  to  follow ;  while 
there  might  be  courses  which  would  com- 
bine equal  selections  from  the  two,  it  must 
generally  be  a  course  distinctly  belonging 
either  to  the  old  education  or  to  the  new ; 
but  each  should  include  enough  of  the  other 
to  give  the  student  that  general  knowledge 
which  every  liberally  educated  man-  must 
have,  and  to  develop  that  respect  for  other 
work  which  is  the  highest  characteristic  of 
the  cultivated  man. 

Changes  have  taken  place  in  college 
courses  ;  fifty  years  ago  they  were  much  the 
same  in  all  American  colleges,  and  for  every 
student  at  each  college ;  but  even  then  they 
covered  a  variety  of  subjects  not  found 
in  any  other  educational  institution.    The 


112  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

Studies  were  of  the  past  rather  than  for  the 
future;  they  were  classical  and  historical, 
rather  than  scientific ;  the  old  education  was 
generally  the  only  one.  A  great  variety  of 
new  studies  have  now  been  introduced, 
while  the  methods  of  conducting  the  old  ones 
have  changed,  A  paper  warfare  has  gone  on 
between  science  and  the  classics,  and  much 
is  heard  of  classical  and  scientific  courses  ; 
if  not  carried  too  far  this  is  all  right.  The 
subjects  which  now  find  their  place  in  a 
college  course  are  too  many  for  any  one  to 
take  them  all,  but  a  selection  should  include 
studies  of  very  different  kinds.  The  studies 
which  are  generally  supposed  to  form  a 
classical  course,  though  no  college  course 
now  consists  exclusively  of  classical  studies, 
are  the  ones  best  fitted  to  train  the  young 
man  whose  life  is  to  be  devoted  to  the  work 
of  the  museum,  and  to  those  professions 
which  are  based  on  a  history  of  the  past ;  they 
are  still  the  bulwarks  of  the  old  education. 
A  scientific  course,  which  ought  in  no  col- 
lege to  consist  entirely  of  science,  is  the 


EDUCATION  113 

true  beginning  of  the  new  education,  and 
the  one  which,  in  the  order  of  other  depart- 
ments, would  precede  the  professional  work 
of  the  engineering  school. 

Different  methods  have  been  adopted  to 
meet  the  increased  variety  of  college  studies. 
But  few  of  the  studies  which  are  now  taught 
at  colleges  can  be  taken  by  any  one  man. 
The  simplest  method  has  been  to  provide 
instruction  in  a  large  number  of  studies  and 
let  each  student  select  what  he  would  take 
himself,  simply  requiring  that  a  sufficient 
aggregate  amount  of  work  ■  be  done  ;  while 
this  method  may  sometimes  result  well  it 
assumes  a  capacity  of  choice  which  few 
young  men  have ;  few  college  students  know, 
except  in  a  general  way,  what  studies  they 
wish  to  pursue  ;  scarcely  any  college  student 
is  capable  of  making  that  judicious  selection 
by  which  he  will  get  a  general  training  in 
the  direction  in  which  his  mind  leads  him, 
with  a  sufficient  admixture  of  other  studies 
to  meet  the  general  requirements  of  a  truly 
liberal  education  ;   the   desultory  selection 


114  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

which  some  boys  have  made  has  produced 
college  graduates  the  Latin  of  whose  de- 
grees is  a  strange  travesty  on  the  ignorance 
of  their  minds.  Another  method,  which  re- 
quires special  skill  in  the  college  govern- 
ment, but  from  which  good  results  may 
come,  is  to  group  studies  in  courses  and  re- 
quire each  student  to  select  a  course  which, 
arranged  by  older  men  than  himself,  may  be 
at  least  expected  to  have  the  proper  admix- 
ture for  good  results.  With  colleges  of  mod- 
erate size  this  may  be  the  best  method. 
When  a  college  becomes  very  large  there  is 
a  method,  which  has  been  little  tried,  but 
which  is  probably  the  best  of  all ;  it  is  not 
merely  to  divide  the  work  into  separate 
courses,  each  being  a  wisely  selected  group 
of  studies,  but  to  divide  the  college  itself 
into  a  number  of  smaller  colleges,  each  ha\dng 
but  a  single  course,  the  number  of  colleges 
corresponding  to  the  number  of  courses ;  this 
scheme  will  involve  duplicate  instruction  if 
each  college  does  all  its  own  work,  but  it 
has   the   great   advantage  of   grouping  to- 


EDUCATION  IIS 

gather  in  one  college  the  young  men  who 
pursue  each  course  of  studies  and  who  have 
a  single  purpose  ;  it  calls  upon  every  student 
to  measure  himself  with  his  fellows  in  a 
spirit  of  friendly  rivalry,  and  it  generates 
that  mutual  esteem  which  comes  when 
young  men  of  very  different  home  training, 
but  who  are  now  working  for  a  common  end, 
are  brought  together  in  the  intimate  rela- 
tions of  daily  life. 

With  the  professional  school  the  separa- 
tion of  each  class  of  education  into  its  final 
subdivision  is  complete.  The  first  division 
comes  gradually ;  it  takes  years  from  its 
first  beginning  in  the  secondary  school  to 
the  end  of  the  college  course ;  the  subdi- 
vision which  follows  comes  all  at  once  when 
the  young  man  is  ready  to  devote  all  his 
energies  to  the  single  pursuit  of  his  profes- 
sion. 

The  three  older  professions,  which  were 
formerly  the  only  ones  recognized  as  lib- 
eral, are  law,  medicine,  and  divinity.  Spe- 
cial professional  schools  exist  for  each  of 


ii6  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

these.  The  first  and  third  belong  to  the 
old  education,  but  medicine  deals  with  the 
powers  in  nature  for  the  use  of  man ;  it 
differs  from  civil  engineering  principally  in 
that  it  deals  with  organic  life  and  not  with 
inanimate  power ;  its  recent  developments 
have  been  rendered  possible  by  the  same 
conditions  that  have  developed  the  engi- 
neering profession ;  its  place  is  with  the 
other  branches  of  physical  science  in  the 
new  education.  The  courses  of  these  three 
sets  of  professional  schools  are  generally 
based  on  the  existence  of  a  previous  college 
course,  which  it  is  at  least  hoped  that  stu- 
dents entering  them  will  have  taken.  One 
leading  American  university,  which  has  been 
at  great  pains  to  raise  the  standard  of  these 
three  departments,  now  limits  admission  to 
its  Law  School  to  graduates  of  colleges,  or 
to  persons  qualified  to  enter  the  senior 
class  of  its  own  college ;  it  requires  an 
examination  for  admission  to  its  Medical 
School,  but  accepts  a  college  degree  as  a 
substitute  for  such  examination ;  a  candi- 


EDUCATION  117 

date  for  a  degree  in  its  Divinity  School 
must  cither  be  a  college  graduate  or  he 
must  give  evidence  that  he  has  received  an 
education  at  least  equal  to  what  a  college 
would  give.  These  are  now  recognized  as 
the  requirements  which  should  precede  the 
special  work  of  the  professions  which  were 
formerly  known  as  the  only  liberal  profes- 
sions. The  requirements  are  right ;  spe- 
cialists can  be  trained  without  these  earlier 
studies ;  liberal  professions  need  them. 
While  it  would  neither  be  just  nor  wise 
to  close  the  bar,  the  pulpit,  or  the  hospital 
to  men  without  college  educations,  it  is 
well  that  at  least  one  university  should 
declare  that  it  will  give  no  professional  de- 
grees to  men  who  are  not  qualified  to  make 
their  professions  liberal. 

Similar  requirements  are  seldom  made  as 
conditions  for  admission  to  schools  of  engi- 
neering. The  same  university  which  now 
insists  on  such  rigid  requirements  for  ad- 
mission to  its  older  professional  schools,  is 
satisfied  with  lower   requirements   for   its 


Ii8  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

Scientific  School  than  it  asks  for  its  under- 
graduate department ;  while  it  has  raised 
the  other  professional  schools  to  a  strictly 
postgraduate  rank,  it  has  given  its  Scientific 
School  a  rank  inferior  to  that  of  its  clas- 
sical college,  though  this  Scientific  School 
is  its  only  provision  for  educating  engineers. 
The  demands  of  the  engineering  profes- 
sion are  now  at  least  equal  to  those  of  any 
other.  The  time  required  to  master  the 
special  studies  of  the  profession  is  certainly 
no  less  than  the  time  needed  for  law  or 
medicine  or  theology.  The  broad  defini- 
tion of  civil  engineering  embraces  all  the 
branches  of  the  engineering  profession, 
and  an  institution  which  would  train  for 
civil  engineering  in  its  broadest  sense  must 
really  comprise  several  professional  schools. 
The  requirements  now  demanded  by  any 
engineering  specialty  are  enough  to  oc- 
cupy the  full  time  of  the  student  during 
the  years  ordinarily  allotted  to  professional 
schools.  If  the  professional  school  of  engi- 
neering   can    dispense  with   the   previous 


EDUCATION  119 

training  of  the  college,  it  means  that  the 
engineer  needs  less  general  education  than 
members  of  other  professions  do ;  it  would 
almost  seem  to  mean  that  civil  engineering 
is  not  a  liberal  profession.  Undoubtedly 
the  work  of  the  engineer  is  less  dependent 
on  a  knowledge  of  the  past  than  is  that  of 
the  lawyer  or  the  priest.  An  engineer  can 
separate  himself  entirely  from  all  work  and 
study  outside  of  close  professional  lines 
without  impairing  his  strictly  professional 
ability.  The  most  skillful  specialist  may  be 
entirely  ignorant  of  everything  but  his  own 
work.  The  man  who  knows  nothing  but 
his  own  profession  may  be  the  most  useful 
man  to  his  employer,  even  though  he  be 
employed  in  a  position  of  great  importance 
and  liberal  pay.  From  this  point  of  view, 
the  additional  years  which  would  be  spent 
in  a  college  may  be  considered  wasted,  and 
the  boy  who  enters  a  technical  school  would 
be  wise  in  saving  the  time  which  would  be 
unnecessarily  spent  in  a  more  varied  educa- 
tion. 


120  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

The  real  question,  however,  is  not  the 
value  of  the  college  course  to  any  individual 
engineer,  but  the  value  of  this  preliminary 
education  to  the  profession  as  a  whole.  Ed- 
ucation must  not  be  organized  on  the  selfish 
basis  of  business  or  for  personal  ends.  The 
true  education  for  a  profession  is  the  educa- 
tion which  will  make  that  profession  accom- 
phsh  the  most  for  the  world.  Every  pro- 
fessional man  must  have  the  education  of  the 
common  school,  and  of  the  secondary  school 
Every  professional  man,  be  he  engineer, 
lawyer,  or  physician,  may,  if  he  wishes,  omit 
the  college,  though  the  omission  closes 
some  avenues  of  later  professional  studies  ; 
the  omission  may  not  impair  his  profes- 
sional efficiency,  it  may  only  deprive  him  of 
the  general  education  which  will  help  him 
to  give  his  own  profession  a  standing  among 
the  other  liberal  professions.  The  omission 
of  the  college  course,  thereby  bringing  the 
professional  schools  of  engineering  immedi- 
ately after  the  secondary  schools,  is  right, 
if  all  engineers  are  to  confine  themselves  to 


EDUCATION  121 

the  strict  limits  of  their  work,  if  all  engi- 
neers will  be  satisfied  to  be  employed  rather 
than  to  be  employers,  if  engineers  are  to 
live  by  themselves,  and  measure  the  value  of 
life  by  what  they  alone  do.  But  the  civil 
engineer  ought  to  fill  many  positions  which 
are  now  held  by  men  of  different  training ; 
a  thorough  education  in  the  laws  which 
govern  the  construction  and  the  working  of 
the  tools  which  men  are  using  must  be  the 
best  qualification  for  the  control  and  use  of 
such  tools.  Among  the  most  successful 
railroad  managers  of  to-day  are  those  who 
have  been  first  trained  as  engineers,  and 
have  been  disciplined  by  the  painstaking 
care  of  physical  management.  The  best, 
the  most  important,  and  the  most  honorable 
work  is  that  which  must  be  performed  by 
comparatively  few,  by  men  who,  passing 
beyond  the  strict  lines  of  professional  work, 
occupy  those  exceptional  positions  in  which 
they  control  others,  in  which  they  direct 
the  progress  of  their  race. 

Amid  the  plains  and  hills  of  India  may 


122  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

be  seen  great  cities  which  were  built  or 
which  were  abandoned  by  the  orders  and  at 
the  pleasure  of  absolute  rulers.  We  cannot 
build  cities  in  this  way  here ;  their  location, 
their  growth,  and  their  prosperity  must  de- 
pend on  commercial  developments,  and  on 
laws  which  no  one  man  can  control.  An 
absolute  monarch  might  create  a  university 
at  the  location  which  he  preferred  and 
with  the  full  organization  which  he  thought 
best ;  we  cannot  do  this  here.  The  develop- 
ment of  our  educational  institutions  must, 
like  everything  else  we  do,  be  gradual,  and 
be  determined  chiefly  by  circumstances 
which  we  cannot  ourselves  control.  The 
most  that  we  can  do  is  to  give  some  slight 
guidance  to  the  unseen  powers  which  are 
at  work,  and,  so  far  as  our  own  lives  and 
influence  can  reach,  direct  these  powers  in 
the  right  way. 

A  great  university,  which  would  be  com- 
plete in  all  departments,  would  be  divided 
on  two  planes,  — on  the  planes  of  time  and  of 
subjects.    As  the  head  of  an  educational  sys- 


EDUCATION  123 

tem,  it  would  not  be  improper  for  it  to  exer- 
cise supervision  and  direction  over  the  com- 
mon and  the  secondary  schools,  but  the  act- 
ual maintenance  of  inferior  departments  is 
hardly  a  proper  part  of  its  work.  There 
would  be  but  one  division  in  time,  —  into 
the  colleges  or  undergraduate  schools  and 
the  professional  or  postgraduate  schools. 
The  division  among  subjects  would  be  more 
varied ;  there  would  be,  first,  the  great  di- 
vision based  on  the  studies  of  the  museum 
and  the  studies  for  active  life,  and  then  there 
would  be  various  subdivisions  to  meet  spe- 
cific aptitudes  and  duties.  In  the  undergrad- 
uate schools  the  line  between  the  old  and 
the  new  education  would  not  be  absolutely 
drawn.  There  would  be  a  number  of  col- 
lege courses,  or  better  a  number  of  colleges, 
whose  work  would  vary  all  the  way  from  that 
which  is  almost  entirely  classical  to  that 
which  is  almost  entirely  scientific,  from 
that  which  thoroughly  represents  the  old 
education  to  that  which  thoroughly  repre- 
sents the  new.   In  the  postgraduate  schools. 


124  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

the  division  among  subjects  would  be  ab- 
solute ;  these  schools  must  belong  to  one 
education  or  the  other;  there  would  be  a 
distinct  division  between,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  graduate  schools  of  the  museum,  includ- 
ing those  for  the  older  professions,  which 
are  based  on  study  of  the  past,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  schools  which  instruct  young 
men  to  utilize  the  powers  of  nature  for  the 
good  of  men,  whether  in  the  various  lines 
of  engineering,  or  in  the  courses  which,  deal- 
ing with  organic  life,  will  train  the  physi- 
cians and  biologists  of  the  future. 

Such  a  complete  university  does  not  now 
exist.  The  name  university  is  generally  ac- 
corded to  any  group  of  schools  and  colleges 
which  forms  a  considerable  part  of  the  great 
whole.  A  group  of  undergraduate  colleges 
may  be  termed  a  university.  A  group  of 
colleges  and  graduate  schools,  whose  work 
is  generally  that  of  the  old  education,  may 
be  termed  a  university  ;  some  of  the  older 
and  more  prominent  universities  of  America 
are  of  this  kind.    A  group  of  colleges  and 


EDUCATION  125 

graduate  schools  belonging  entirely  to  the 
new  education  may  be  called  a  university ; 
some  of  the  newer  universities  of  America 
are  based  on  these  lines. 

There  would  seem  to  be  great  advantage 
in  grouping  together  in  one  university  the 
several  undergraduate  colleges  whose  courses 
vary  from  the  extreme  of  the  old  to  the  ex- 
treme of  the  new  education,  in  uniting  them 
where  there  may  be  some  acquaintance 
and  some  communication  between  the  stu- 
dents of  even  those  colleges  whose  courses 
differ  most  widely,  where  equal  rank  and 
merit  may  lead  each  to  respect  the  other. 
Liberal  professions,  professions  whose  mem- 
bers would  appreciate  what  they  cannot  per- 
form, and  admire  what  they  can  only  par- 
tially understand,  demand  not  only  that  there 
should  be  some  admixture  of  science  with 
the  classics,  and  of  the  classics  with  science, 
but  also  that  the  young  men  who  choose 
one  should  not  be  kept  too  far  away  from 
those  who  choose  the  other. 

On  the  other  hand  little  may  be  gained 


126  THE    NEW   EPOCH 

by  placing  the  schools  for  different  profes- 
sions under  the  wing  of  a  common  univer- 
sity management.  Professional  training  is 
too  distinctive  a  matter,  its  lines  are  too 
closely  drawn,  and  the  students  are  gener- 
ally too  old,  to  have  much  to  do  with  those 
who  are  following  other  pursuits.  There 
might  be  satisfaction  and  some  advantage 
in  having  schools  for  all  professions  grouped 
in  a  single  university  ;  but  while  the  studies 
of  the  college  course  can  be  pursued  in  the 
quiet  of  a  university  town,  away  from  the 
active  work  of  the  present  day,  perhaps 
better  than  anywhere  else,  professional 
education  should  not  be  separated  too  far 
from  the  lines  of  work  and  the  sympathies 
of  the  profession  itself  ;  there  would  be  few 
locations  equally  favorable  for  schools  of 
every  profession.  The  associations  of  a  col- 
lege undergraduate  should  be  with  others 
of  the  same  age  and  educational  rank  ;  the 
associations  of  professional  students  should 
be  with  older  men  of  their  own  profession, 
rather  than  with  students  of  other  profes- 


EDUCATION  127 

sional  schools.  While  the  best  college  work 
can  probably  be  done  in  those  colleges 
which,  with  widely  different  courses,  are 
grouped  into  a  single  university,  the  best 
professional  instruction  may  be  given  by 
professional  schools  located  where  the  stu- 
dents can  have  some  intercourse  with  the 
older  men  of  the  professions  they  are  to 
follow,  and  can  at  least  see  something  of 
actual  work  of  the  kind  they  hope  later 
to  do  themselves.  There  must  be  opportu- 
nities for  interchange  of  ideas  between  pro- 
fessors and  workers,  between  students  and 
their  future  employers,  between  the  young 
men  and  the  old  men  whose  places  they 
expect  to  take. 


VIII 

CONCLUSION 

We  are  all  familiar  with  the  story  of  the 
prophet  who,  after  trials  and  tribulations  of 
strange  and  terrible  character,  went  to  a 
city  and  preached  that  its  destruction  was 
close  at  hand.  This  volume  is  not  prepared 
in  the  spirit  of  prophecy,  nor  are  the  condi- 
tions of  the  new  epoch  like  those  which 
attended  this  tremendous  preaching.  Still 
in  many  ways  the  new  epoch  must  open  as 
an  era  of  destruction.  It  must  from  its 
very  nature  destroy  many  of  the  conditions 
which  give  most  interest  to  the  history  of 
the  past,  and  many  of  the  traditions  which 
people  hold  most  dear.  It  will  put  an  end, 
once  for  all,  to  savage  and  barbarous  races, 
who  must  either  be  elevated  to  the  life  of 
their  more  civilized  contemporaries  or  must 
vanish   from    existence.    It    must    destroy 


CONCLUSION  129 

ignorance,  as  the  entire  world  will  be  edu- 
cated, and  one  of  the  greatest  dangers 
must  come  from  this  very  source,  when  the 
number  of  half-educated  people  is  greatest, 
when  the  world  is  full  of  people  who  do 
not  know  enough  to  recognize  their  limita- 
tions, but  know  too  much  to  follow  loyally 
the  direction  of  better  qualified  leaders. 
With  the  disappearance  of  ignorance  will 
come  the  destruction  of  superstitions  which 
have  exercised  such  a  momentous  influence 
in  the  past,  perhaps  generally  for  evil,  but 
in  many  instances  for  good.  There  must 
be  a  great  destruction,  both  in  the  physical 
and  in  the  intellectual  world,  of  old  build- 
ings, old  boundaries,  and  old  monuments, 
and  furthermore  of  customs  and  ideas,  sys- 
tems of  thought  and  methods  of  education. 
There  must  be  changes  in  governments, 
which  means  destruction  of  old  constitu- 
tions, destruction  of  races  as  they  merge 
into  one  another,  destruction  of  languages, 
in  the  gradual  disappearance  of  all  but  a 
few  of  Ihe  most  important,  while  even  these 


X 


130  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

may  in  time  give  place  to  one  that  is  uni- 
versal. It  is  not  worth  while  to  consider 
how  this  destruction  will  occur,  nor  how 
much  time  it  will  require  for  its  completion. 
The  important  fact  is  that  destruction  will 
come,  not  because  the  things  which  are  de- 
stroyed are  in  themselves  bad,  but  because 
however  good  and  useful  they  may  have 
been  in  the  past,  they  are  not  adapted  to 
fulfill  the  requirements  of  the  new  epoch. 

Our  principal  thought  must  not  be  of  the 
destruction  but  of  the  new  development 
which  makes  that  destruction  necessary. 
The  destruction  is  not  something  to  be 
feared  or  avoided,  it  is  inevitable.  But  de- 
struction is  always  attended  with  danger ; 
some  time  may  elapse  after  the  old  has  gone 
before  the  new  is  established  in  its  place. 
If  any  warning  is  to  be  given,  this  is  where 
it  should  come.  Education  must  adapt  it- 
self to  the  new  demands  ;  professional  work 
must  be  extended,  —  the  work  of  the  men 
who  receive  salaries  and  fees  for  what  they 
know  and  can  do,  rather  than  those  who,  on 


CONCLUSION  131 

the  one  hand,  take  the  chances  of  profits  on 
their  own  ventures  and  speculations,  and, 
those  who,  on  the  other  hand,  receive  wages 
for  physical  rather  than  mental  labor.  There 
will  be  many  other  changes,  the  general  na- 
ture of  a  few  of  which  has  already  been  out- 
lined. The  danger  is  that  the  destructive 
changes  will  come  too  fast,  and  the  develop- 
ments which  are  to  take  their  place  not  fast 
enough.  The  trouble  will  lie  in  the  possible 
gap  between  the  two.  The  next  two  or  three 
centuries  may  have  periods  of  war,  insurrec- 
tion, and  other  trials,  which  it  would  be  well 
if  the  world  could  avoid. 

When  the  period  of  change  is  over  it 
would  seem  as  if  the  final  conditions  of 
human  civilization  would  have  been  reached. 
It  is  proper  to  say  that  it  seems,  for  no  one 
can  tell  what  new  capacity  may  at  some 
future  time  change  the  conditions  of  life 
again.  But  when  the  development  of  the 
new  epoch  has  become  universal  over  the 
whole  globe,  so  that  all  have  the  same  tools 
to  work  with,  and  if   necessary  to  defend 


132  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

and  fight  with,  so  that  each  land  has  the 
advantage  of  what  all  the  others  know ; 
when  the  possibilities  of  adventure  are  re- 
moved ;  when  the  opportunities  for  specu- 
lation no  longer  exist ;  it  would  seem  as  if 
mankind  must  settle  down  to  a  long  period 
of  rest.  In  many  parts  of  our  country,  towns 
may  be  found  which,  after  a  few  years  of 
rapid,  energetic  development,  seem  to  have 
attained  their  growth,  and  improvement 
seems  to  stop ;  but  in  reality  they  simply 
cease  to  increase  rapidly  in  population ; 
better  houses  are  built,  the  people  are  sur- 
rounded with  more  comforts,  and  though 
the  adventurous  pioneers  may  be  gone,  the 
people  who  remain  have  settled  down  to 
the  quiet  satisfaction  of  a  comfortable  life. 
Similar  changes  have  come  in  national  life 
where  nations  became  so  consolidated  or  so 
enlarged  that  there  was  no  further  occa- 
sion for  war,  and  their  communication  with 
other  nations  virtually  ceased.  Such  was 
the  history  of  Japan ;  such  seems  to  have 
been  the    history  of    China.    They  have 


CONCLUSION  133 

prospered  and  continued  in  a  morbid,  self- 
satisfied  existence,  until  the  manufacture  of 
power  opened  the  new  epoch  in  the  western 
world  and  they  suddenly  became  aware  that 
other  and  stronger  nations  than  themselves 
existed.    A  like  condition  will  occur  when 
the  new  epoch  is  fully  developed,  but  with 
one  important  difference ;  it  will  not  be  the 
condition  of  a  town  nor  of  a  nation  but  of 
the  whole  earth,  with  nothing  to  change  it 
unless   communication   should    be    opened 
with  another  planet,  a  possibility  perhaps, 
but  one  on  which  we  need  waste  no  thought. 
It   seems   likely  that    material  develop- 
ments will  come  to  a  gradual  pause,  that 
the  stimulus  will  be  removed,  and  that  the 
densely  populated  earth  may  continue  for 
centuries  with  comparatively  little  change  ; 
that  then  an  immense  population  will  live 
comfortably  and  happily,  and  the  qualities 
which  make  the  good  citizen  and  the  con- 
tented man  will  be  more  in  demand  than 
those  which  make  leaders  in  such  periods 
as  we  are  familiar  with.    It  may  be  a  time 


134  THE   NEW   EPOCH 

when  every  one  will  understand  the  com- 
fort and  peace  of  mind  which  attend  the 
adaptation  of  personal  feeling  to  the  gen- 
eral conditions  which  surround  him.  How- 
ever satisfactory  this  condition  may  be, 
whatever  its  delights,  and  whatever  the  ex- 
cellence and  happiness  which  may  be  in 
store  for  the  inhabitants  of  the  thirtieth 
century,  they  are  not  for  us.  We  have, 
however,  one  privilege  which  will  not  be- 
long to  them.  In  all  history  and  in  all 
periods  of  the  world,  the  honors  are  held  to 
belong,  not  to  those  who  enjoy  the  results, 
but  to  those  who  have  made  these  results 
possible.  Our  generation  has  the  privilege 
of  doing  its  full  share  in  bringing  forth  the 
great  changes  which  are  ushering  in  the 
new  epoch. 


Electrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &'  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stami>ed  below. 


INTERLIBRARY  LOANS 
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